American mathematician and computer scientist Donald Ervin Knuth is widely considered one of the world's leading computer scientists, and he is best known for writing the authoritative "Bible" of computer programming: The Art of Computer Programming. Knuth first demonstrated his ability to recognize and manipulate patterns when he formed 4,500 different words from a local candy maker's brand name, thus winning first prize in an eighth-grade contest. Knuth was more interested in composing and playing music than in the sciences in high school. However, upon graduation with the school's highest grade-point-average, Knuth was offered a physics scholarship at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve), and during his freshman year in 1956 he encountered his first computer, an IBM-650. Knuth taught himself the basic program from the manual, and soon was writing better programs than the manual's examples. Knuth's accomplishment was featured in Newsweek magazine, and later appeared in...