Andries van Dam

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Andries "Andy" van Dam is a professor of computer science and Vice-President for Research at Brown University in Providence, RI. He was one of the founders of the Brown Computer Science Department and its first chairman from 1979 to 1985. He was the second person to ever receive a Ph.D. in Computer Science.

Van Dam is perhaps most renowned for building the first hypertext system, HES. The term hypertext, however, was coined by Ted Nelson who was working for him at the time.Andries Van Dam: [Keynote '87 Key Note Address]

He is also known for co-authoring Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice along with J.D. Foley, S.K. Feiner, and J.F. Hughes. This book is generally considered one of the most important texts in computer graphics and is often fondly referred to as the "Bible" of computer graphics.

In 1967, Professor van Dam co-founded ACM SIGGRAPH.ACM SIGGRAPH: [Report on Andy Van Dam]

Currently, Professor van Dam is teaching several courses in computer graphics at Brown University. He is also serving on the Technical Board of Microsoft Research, as Chairman of the Rhode Island Governor's Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), and as Chairman of the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal committee.

Rumors

Rumor has it that the character of Andy in Pixar Studio's 1995 film Toy Story was named after Professor van Dam.

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