EMU math department blog

Donald Knuth is one of the computer scientists I admire. He has been called the father of algorithm analysis. His multi-volume books, The Art of Computer Programming, were first published in 1968 and still considered must-have in a theoretical computer scientist’s bookshelf. He is the creator of the Tex computer typesetting system, which I used to write all my research papers. He won the Turing award, the most prestigious award in computer science, in 1974. We even set up a prize named after him, the Knuth Prize.

As a Christian, Knuth appreciated the richness and depth of the Bible. Once when he led a Bible class at his church, he decided to use a “scientific approach” to study the Bible. In science, stratified sampling is an effective way to gain knowledge about complicated things. The idea is as follows: a large body of information can be comprehended reasonably well by studying more or less random portions of the data. In order to have a pretty good understanding about the Bible within a reasonably short amount of time, Knuth chose to study carefully and thoroughly Chapter 3, verse 16 of every book in the Bible. The reason he selected this particular verse is because of the great popularity of John 3:16.

His Bible class was a huge success at the church. Knuth found that almost every verse, not just John 3:16, is fascinating and full of historical and spiritual insights. His experience was so inspiring that he decided to write a book about it — 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated. I enjoy reading this book very much. You may check out this book from EMU library.

His “God and Computers” lectures at MIT in 1999 turned into another book — Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About. It is not available in EMU library, but you may drop by my office to browse through my personal copy.