Miller Puckette auf der Linux Audio Conference 2014 in Karlsruhe

Miller Smith Puckette (born 1959) is the associate director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts as well as a professor of music at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is ...

, where he has been since 1994. Puckette is known for authoring Max, a graphical development environment for

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspe ...

and

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

synthesis, which he developed while working at

IRCAM IRCAM (French: ''Ircam, '', English: Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music. It is ...

in the late 1980s. He is also the author of

Pure Data Pure Data (Pd) is a visual programming language developed by Miller Puckette in the 1990s for creating interactive computer music and multimedia works. While Puckette is the main author of the program, Pd is an open-source project with a large d ...

(Pd), a real-time performing platform for audio, video and graphical

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

for the creation of interactive

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...

and multimedia works, written in the 1990s with input from many others in the computer music and

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

communities.

Biography

An alumnus of St. Andrew's-Sewanee School in Tennessee, Miller Puckette got involved in computer music in 1979 at MIT with

Barry Vercoe Barry Lloyd Vercoe (born 1937) is a New Zealand-born computer scientist and composer. He is best known as the inventor of Csound, a music synthesis language with wide usage among computer music composers. SAOL, the underlying language for the ...

.
Stallmann, Kurt: A Conversation with Miller Puckette: 2008 SEAMUS Award Recipient. ''Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States Newsletter'', June 2008, Issue 2, Page 5-9. In 1979 he became a William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, Putnam Fellow. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in 1986 after completing an undergraduate degree at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in 1980. He was a member of the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

from its opening in 1985 until 1987 before continuing his research at

, and since 1997 has been a part of the Global Visual Music project. He used Max to complete his first work, which is called ''Pluton'' from the second work of Manoury' series called ''Sonus ex Machina''. He is the 2008 SEAMUS Award Recipient. On May 11, 2011, he received the title of

Doctor Honoris Causa An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad ho ...

from the

University of Mons The University of Mons (french: Université de Mons) is a Belgian university located in the city of Mons, founded in 2009 by merging the Engineering Faculty of Mons (FPMs) and the University of Mons-Hainaut. The merging of the institutions w ...

. On July 21, 2012, he received an Honorary Degree from

Bath Spa University Bath Spa University is a public university in Bath, England, with its main campus at Newton Park, about west of the centre of the city. The university has other campuses in the city of Bath, and one at Corsham Court in Wiltshire. The inst ...

in recognition of his extraordinary contribution to computer music research. He was the recipient of the Gold Medal at the 1975 Math Olympiads and the Silver Medal at the 1976 Math Olympiads.International Math Olympiads
on imo-official.org

Selected publications

: ''For a full list, see: http://msp.ucsd.edu/publications.html'' * * Puckette, Miller (2004) �
Who Owns our Software?: A first-person case study
�� Proceedings, ISEA, pp. 200–202, republished in September 2009 issue of Montréal: Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / Canadian Electroacoustic Community. * Puckette, Miller (2002) ''

Computer Music Journal ''Computer Music Journal'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers a wide range of topics related to digital audio signal processing and electroacoustic music. It is published on-line and in hard copy by MIT Press. The journal is accompani ...

'' 26(4): pp. 31–43.

References

External links

Miller Puckette's websiteVisual Music Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Puckette, Miller Living people University of California, San Diego faculty Harvard University alumni International Mathematical Olympiad participants Putnam Fellows 1959 births MIT Media Lab people