Martin Edward Newell is a British-born

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

specializing in

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

who is perhaps best known as the creator of the Utah teapot computer model.

Career

Before emigrating to the US, he worked at what was then the Computer-Aided Design Centre ( CADCentre) in Cambridge, UK, along with his brother

Dick Newell Richard G. Newell is a British businessman and technologist in the software industry in Computer aided design (CAD) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Career Newell holds degrees in Civil Engineering and Numerical Analysis and a PhD in Che ...

(who went on to co-found two of the most important UK graphics software companies – Cambridge Interactive Systems (CIS) in 1977 and

Smallworld Smallworld is the brand name of a portfolio of GIS software provided by GE Digital, a division of General Electric. The software was originally created by the Smallworld company founded in Cambridge, England, in 1989 by Dick Newell and others. ...

in 1987). At CADCentre, the two Newells and Tom Sancha developed

Newell's algorithm Newell's Algorithm is a 3D computer graphics procedure for elimination of polygon cycles in the depth sorting required in hidden surface removal. It was proposed in 1972 by brothers Martin Newell and Dick Newell, and Tom Sancha, while all three we ...

, a technique for eliminating cyclic dependencies when ordering polygons to be drawn by a computer graphics system. Utah teapot simple 2

Newell developed the Utah teapot while working on a Ph.D. at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

, where he also helped develop a version of the

painter's algorithm The painter's algorithm (also depth-sort algorithm and priority fill) is an algorithm for Hidden-surface determination#Visible surface determination, visible surface determination in 3D computer graphics that works on a polygon, polygon-by-polyg ...

for rendering. He graduated in 1975, and was on the Utah faculty from 1977 to 1979.History of the University of Utah School of Computing
retrieved 2010-01-26. Later he worked at

Xerox PARC Future Concepts division (formerly Palo Alto Research Center, PARC and Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. It was founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, as a div ...

, where he worked on JaM, a predecessor of

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language and dynamically typed, stack-based programming language. It is most commonly used in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm, but as a Turing complete programming language, it c ...

. JaM stood for "John and Martin" – the John was

John Warnock John Edward Warnock (October 6, 1940 – August 19, 2023) was an American computer scientist, inventor, technology businessman, and philanthropist best known for co-founding Adobe Systems Inc., the graphics and publishing software company, wit ...

, co-founder of

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

. Newell departed Xerox PARC to join CADLINC Inc., a factory automation startup, as VP of Advanced Development. There he led the development of a variety of CAD/CAM software applications, such as CimCAD (a 3-D drafting program) and Intelligent Documentation (an early electronic document editor integrating text, graphics, and information from relational databases). He departed CADLINC to found the

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

software company

Ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

in 1988. In 2007, Newell was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

for contributions to computer-graphics modeling, rendering, and printing.Dr. Martin E. Newell
in the NAE Members Directory, retrieved 2014-06-27. He recently retired as an Adobe Fellow at

References

Living people University of Utah alumni University of Utah faculty British emigrants to the United States British computer scientists British technology company founders American computer scientists Computer graphics researchers Year of birth missing (living people) Scientists at PARC (company) {{compu-scientist-stub