Alvy Ray Smith III (born September 8, 1943) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

who co-founded

Lucasfilm Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company and a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is a business segment of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is best known for creating and producing the '' Star Wars'' and ...

's Computer Division and Pixar, participating in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of computer animation into

feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...

Education

In 1965, Alvy Smith received his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from New Mexico State University (NMSU). He created his first computer graphic in 1965 at NMSU. In 1970, he received a Ph.D. in computer science from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, with a dissertation on cellular automata theory jointly supervised by Michael A. Arbib,

Edward J. McCluskey Edward Joseph McCluskey (October 16, 1929 – February 13, 2016) was a professor at Stanford University. He was a pioneer in the field of Electrical Engineering. Biography McCluskey worked on electronic switching systems at the Bell Telephon ...

, and

Bernard Widrow Bernard Widrow (born December 24, 1929) is a U.S. professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. He is the co-inventor of the Widrow–Hoff least mean squares filter (LMS) adaptive algorithm with his then doctoral student Ted Hoff. ...

Career

His first art show was at the Stanford Coffeehouse. From 1969 to 1973 he was an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

, under chairman

Herbert Freeman Dr. Herbert Freeman (born Herbert Freinmann, December 13, 1925 – November 15, 2020) was an American computer scientist who made important contributions to the field of automatic label placement, computer graphics, including spatial anti-alias ...

, one of the earliest computer graphics researchers. He taught briefly at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

in 1974. While at Xerox PARC in 1974, Smith worked with Richard Shoup on SuperPaint, one of the first computer

raster graphics editor A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to create and edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics file formats (also known as bitmap images) such as JPEG, PNG, and GI ...

, or 'paint', programs. Smith's major contribution to this software was the creation of the

HSV color space HSL (for hue, saturation, lightness) and HSV (for hue, saturation, value; also known as HSB, for hue, saturation, brightness) are alternative representations of the RGB color model, RGB color model, designed in the 1970s by computer graphics res ...

, also known as HSB. He created his first computer animations on the SuperPaint system. In 1975, Smith joined the new Computer Graphics Laboratory at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), where he was given the job title "Information Quanta". There, working alongside a traditional cel animation studio, he met Ed Catmull and several core personnel of Pixar. Smith worked on a series of newer paint programs, including ''Paint3'', the first true-color raster graphics editor. As part of this work, he co-invented the concept of the alpha channel. He was also the programmer and collaborator on Ed Emshwiller's animation ''Sunstone'', included in the collection of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of t ...

in New York. Smith worked at NYIT until 1979, and then briefly at the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, La Cañada Flintridge, California ...

with Jim Blinn on the

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ex ...

'' Cosmos: A Personal Voyage'' television series. With Ed Catmull, Smith was a founding member of the Lucasfilm Computer Division, which developed computer graphics software, including early renderer technology. As director of the Computer Graphics Project, Smith created and directed the "Genesis Demo" in '' Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan'', and conceived and directed the short animated film '' The Adventures of André & Wally B.'', animated by John Lasseter. At some point in the 1980s, a designer suggested naming a new digital compositing computer the "Picture Maker". Smith thought that the laser-based device have a catchier name, and came up with "Pixer", which after a meeting was changed to "Pixar". Smith and Catmull co-founded Pixar in 1986 with financing from

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; ...

. After the spinout from Lucasfilm of Pixar, he served on the board of directors and was executive vice president. According to the Steve Jobs

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or c ...

''iCon'' by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, Alvy Ray quit Pixar after a heated argument with Jobs over the use of a whiteboard. It was an unwritten rule that no one other than Jobs was allowed to use it, a rule Smith decided to break in front of everyone after Jobs went "total street bully" on him and they ended up screaming into each other's face "in full bull rage". Despite being the co-founder of Pixar, Young and Simon claim that the company has largely overlooked his part in company history since his departure. For example, there is no mention of Smith on the Pixar website. He was for four years (1988–1992) a member of the board of regents of the

National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which ...

, where he was instrumental in inaugurating the

Visible Human Project The Visible Human Project is an effort to create a detailed data set of cross-sectional photographs of the human body, in order to facilitate anatomy visualization applications. It is used as a tool for the progression of medical findings, in which ...

. In 1991, Smith left Pixar to cofound

Altamira Software Altamira Software was founded in Mill Valley, California by Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, Eric Lyons and Nicholas Clay in 1991. The company's primary product was Altamira Composer. This PC based software pioneered object-based drawing and image editing. ...

, with Eric Lyons and Nicholas Clay. Altamira was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

in 1994. Smith became the first Graphics Fellow at Microsoft in 1994. Pixar would go on to release '' Toy Story'' the following year and go public, helping to put Steve Jobs back at Apple. Smith retired from Microsoft in 1999, to spend his time giving talks, making digital photographs, doing scholarly genealogy, and researching technical history. He lives in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

, Washington. In 2010 Smith married Alison Gopnik, author and Professor of Psychology at the

Awards

With his collaborators, Smith has twice been recognized by the

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion ...

for his scientific and engineering contributions, to digital image compositing (1996 award) and digital paint systems (1998 award). In 1990, Smith and Richard Shoup received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award for their development of paint programs. Smith presented the Forsythe Lecture in 1997 at Stanford University, where he received his PhD in 1970. His undergraduate alma mater New Mexico State University awarded him an honorary doctorate in December 1999.Hill, Karl
"NMSU graduate elected to National Academy of Engineering"
NMSU News, March 30, 2006.
''Panorama'', New Mexico State University, December 1999 (archived 2001)Hill, Karl
"Rancher, computer graphics pioneer to receive honorary doctorates at NMSU's Fall Commencement"
NMSU News, December 6, 1999 He was inducted into the CRN Industry Hall of Fame at the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact o ...

in Mountain View, CA in 2004. In 2006, Smith was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2010, Smith was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists and presented the Washington Award in Chicago for advancing "the welfare of humankind". In 2011, Smith was awarded the Special Award at Mundos Digitales in La Coruna, Spain, for lifetime achievement in computer graphics. In 2012, Smith was awarded the Digital Media Symposium Lifetime Achievement Award in Boulder, Colorado, and was awarded a plaque in the Circle of Honor at New Mexico State University. In 2013, Smith was elected a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

. Smith has been the recipient of several grants from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

and the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

during his career. In May 2022, Smith received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from New York Institute of Technology (where he co-founded the Computer Graphics Laboratory) for his pioneering work in computer animation. "New York Tech Celebrates Its 61st Commencement". NYIT.edu.
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References

Sources

* Michael Rubin, ''Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution'' (2005) * Elio Quiroga, "La Materia de los Sueños", Fundación DMR Consulting, Ediciones Deusto (Spain, 2004) * Simon, William L. and Young, Jeffrey S. "iCon: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business." (2005) * David A. Price, "The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company" (2008) * Walter Isaacson, "Steve Jobs" (2011)

External links