Bui Tuong Phong (December 14, 1942 – July 1975) was a

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making it ...

ese-born

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal ...

researcher and pioneer. He invented the widely used

Phong shading In 3D computer graphics, Phong shading, Phong interpolation, or normal-vector interpolation shading is an interpolation technique for surface shading invented by computer graphics pioneer Bui Tuong Phong. Phong shading interpolates surface nor ...

algorithm and

Phong reflection model The Phong reflection model (also called Phong illumination or Phong lighting) is an empirical model of the local illumination of points on a surface designed by the computer graphics researcher Bui Tuong Phong. In 3D computer graphics, it is so ...

Life

Phong was born in

Hanoi Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi i ...

, then

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...

. After attending the Lycée Albert Sarraut there, he moved with his family to

Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...

in 1954, where he attended the Lycée Jean Jacques Rousseau. He went to France in 1964 and was admitted to the Grenoble Institute of Technology. He received his from Grenoble in 1966 and his ''

Diplôme d'Ingénieur The Diplôme d'Ingénieur (, often abbreviated as ''Dipl. Ing.'') is a postgraduate degree in engineering ''(see Engineer's Degrees in Europe)'' usually awarded by the Grandes Écoles in engineering. It is generally obtained after five to seven ye ...

'' from the

ENSEEIHT The École nationale supérieure d'électrotechnique, d'électronique, d'informatique, d'hydraulique et des télécommunications (ENSEEIHT) is a French engineering school (Grande École) which offers education in Electrical Engineering, Electron ...

, Toulouse, in 1968. In 1968, he joined the (then IRIA) as a researcher in Computer Science, working in the development of

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s for digital computers. He went to the University of Utah College of Engineering in September 1971 as a research assistant in Computer Science and he received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1973. Phong knew that he was terminally ill with

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia and pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or ...

while he was a student. In 1975, after his tenure at the University of Utah, Phong joined Stanford University as a professor. Phong was married to Bùi Thị Ngọc Bích from

Nha Trang Nha Trang ( or ; ) is a coastal city and capital of Khánh Hòa Province, on the South Central Coast of Vietnam. It is bounded on the north by Ninh Hoà town, on the south by Cam Ranh city and on the west by Diên Khánh District. The city has a ...

, Vietnam, in 1969 in Paris, France. He and his wife had one daughter. According to Professor Ivan Sutherland and Phong's friends, Phong was intelligent, affable and modest. About improving the quality of synthesized images he wrote, "We do not expect to be able to display the object exactly as it would appear in reality, with texture, overcast shadows, etc. We hope only to display an image that approximates the real object closely enough to provide a certain degree of realism." Two years after receiving his Ph.D., Phong died in 1975 of end-stage leukemia.

Work on computer graphics

Phong was the inventor of the

and the

interpolation method, techniques widely used in computer graphics. He published the description of the algorithms in his 1973 PhD dissertation and a 1975 paper. He developed the first algorithm for simulating specular phenomena. When working on his doctorate, he was very focused on selecting a topic and completing his dissertation very fast. Professor

David C. Evans David Cannon Evans (February 24, 1924 – October 3, 1998) was the founder of the computer science department at the University of Utah and co-founder (with Ivan Sutherland) of Evans & Sutherland, a pioneering firm in computer graphics hardwar ...

very enthusiastically supported him in this project. Professor Ivan Sutherland worked with him for improving the previous

Mach banding Mach bands is an optical illusion named after the physicist Ernst Mach. It exaggerates the contrast between edges of the slightly differing shades of gray, as soon as they contact one another, by triggering edge-detection in the human visual s ...

problems, and on using normals for shading. His fellow students also supported him very much, including James H. Clark, Franklin C. Crow, George Randall, Dennis Ting and John Riley. He finished his dissertation much faster than other students of the time did. Phong, Robert McDermott, Jim Clark and Raphael Rom had created the very first computer graphics generated picture that looked like its physical model: the

Volkswagen Beetle The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...

. As a computer graphics icon, it still crops up in highly respected journals and animated features.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bui, Tuong Phong 1942 births 1975 deaths Computer graphics researchers People from Hanoi Vietnamese expatriates in the United States Vietnamese academics Vietnamese scientists University of Utah alumni Deaths from leukemia Deaths from cancer in California People educated at Lycee Albert Sarraut

Life

Work on computer graphics

See also

References