salzman@jvnca.csc.org (David B. Salzman) (10/20/89)
The John von Neumann National Supercomputer Center
665 College Road East, Plainsboro, NJ
609/520-2000
Jim Blinn
DESIGN ISSUES FOR THE ANIMATION OF MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS
Monday, 23 October 1989
[Lecture begins at 4:00 pm; refreshments served at 3:30 pm.]
Across the entire sweep of the natural sciences, from
mathematics and physics through chemistry and biology, computers
are being used widely in research but less ambitiously for
teaching itself. "Project Mathematics!" and the earlier "Mech-
anical Universe" are exceptions: computer-animated videotape
courses created by Jim Blinn and Tom Apostol as part of a modern
version of the textbook. The speaker will review design issues
arising from visualization in scientific computing, with the
eventual goal of reinventing animation as a solo activity, "so
that people can animate with the same facility that they write
textbooks."
Jim Blinn has invented or developed many of the techniques
used in scientific visualization, including bump mapping,
texture mapping with shinyness & color, blobby molecules, and
environment mapping. He created the flyby animations for the
Pioneer 11 and Voyager probes for NASA, earning NASA's
Exceptional Service Medal, and has received the ACM SIGGRAPH
Computer Graphics Achievement Award and the IEEE Outstanding
Contribution Award. He earned his Ph.D. from Utah in 1977.
The lecture is free and open to the public. No reservations
are required. For further information, call 609/520-2000.