Thomas Douglas Selkirk Duff (born December 8, 1952) is a Canadian

computer programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

Life and career

Early life

Duff was born in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada, and was named for his putative ancestor, the fifth Earl of Selkirk. He grew up in Toronto and

Leaside Leaside (/'liːˌsaɪd/) is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located northeast of Downtown Toronto, in the vicinity of Eglinton Avenue East and Bayview Avenue. It is one of the most expensive and exclusive neighbourhoo ...

. In 1974 he graduated from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

with a B.Math and, two years later, was awarded an M.Sc. from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

Programming career

Duff worked at the

New York Institute of Technology The New York Institute of Technology (NYIT or New York Tech) is a Private university, private research university, research university founded in 1955. It has two main campuses in New York (state), New York—one in Old Westbury, on Long I ...

Computer Graphics Lab and the

Mark Williams Company The Mark Williams Company was a small software company in Chicago, Illinois (later moved to Northbrook, Illinois, Northbrook) that created Coherent (operating system), Coherent, one of the first Unix-like operating systems for IBM PCs and sever ...

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

before moving to

Lucasfilm Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company founded by filmmaker George Lucas in December 10, 1971 in San Rafael, California, and later moved to San Francisco in 2005. It is best known for creating and producing th ...

's Computer Research and Development Division. He and Thomas Porter, another Lucasfilm employee, developed a new approach to compositing images; their 1984 paper, "Compositing Digital Images", is " e seminal work on an algebra for image compositing", according to Keith Packard, and " Porter-Duff compositing" is now a key technique in computer graphics. (See, for example, XRender and Glitz.) Duff later worked for 12 years at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

Computing Science Research Center, where he worked on computer graphics, wireless networking, and Plan 9; in the course of his work there, he authored the well known " rc"

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...

for the Version 10 Unix operating system. Duff worked at

Pixar Animation Studios Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney S ...

from 1996 until his retirement in 2021.

Achievements

* In 1995, he was awarded (with others) the Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for his work on digital image compositing. With Bill Reeves he designed the first version of

Pixar Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney ...

Marionette A marionette ( ; ) is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by ...

3-D animation system, which won the same award in 1997. * While working at Lucasfilm, he created Duff's device, a

loop unrolling Loop unrolling, also known as loop unwinding, is a loop transformation technique that attempts to optimize a program's execution speed at the expense of its binary size, which is an approach known as space–time tradeoff. The transformation c ...

mechanism in C. * On August 22, 2006, the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency in the United States Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark ...

issued to

for a "Shot shading method and apparatus" invented by Tom Duff and Robert L. Cook. *On October 31, 2006, the

issued to

for a "Shot rendering method and apparatus" invented by Tom Duff and Robert L. Cook. * In 2015 he became the 21st awardee of the J.W. Graham Medal, named in honor of Wes Graham an early influential Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, and annually awarded to an influential alumnus of the University's Faculty of Mathematics.

In the media

* Tom Duff makes a

cameo appearance A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking on ...

in the Niven/ Pournelle science fiction novel '' Footfall'' as a co-discoverer of the invading spaceship: "Chap named Tom Duff, a computer type, spotted it." * Tom Duff appears briefly in the documentary film "Noisy People" (dir Tim Perkis, 2006) playing the banjo.

References

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

11273-880728-02TMS, August 1987 {{DEFAULTSORT:Duff, Tom 1952 births Living people Computer graphics professionals University of Waterloo alumni Unix people Pixar people Plan 9 people Scientists at Bell Labs People from Toronto J.W. Graham Medal awardees New York Institute of Technology faculty Lucasfilm people