Andries van Dam

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Andries "Andy" van Dam is a professor of computer science and former Vice-President for Research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Originally appointed as a professor of applied mathematics, he helped to found the computer science program as a joint project between the departments of applied mathematics and engineering. When the program was promoted to a full department, van Dam served as its first chair, from 1979 to 1985.

At the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, he became the second person to ever receive a Ph.D. in Computer Science.

Van Dam is perhaps most renowned for building the first hypertext system, HES. The term hypertext, however, was coined by Ted Nelson who was working for him at the time.^[1]

He is also known for co-authoring Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice along with J.D. Foley, S.K. Feiner, and J.F. Hughes. This book is generally considered one of the most important texts in computer graphics and is often fondly referred to as the "Bible" of computer graphics.

In 1967, Professor van Dam co-founded ACM SIGGRAPH.^[2]

Currently, Professor van Dam is teaching several courses in computer graphics at Brown University. In addition, he often teaches one introductory computer science course per semester. He is also serving on the Technical Board of Microsoft Research, as Chairman of the Rhode Island Governor's Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), and as Chairman of the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal committee.

[edit] Rumors

Rumor has it that the character of Andy in Pixar Studio's 1995 film Toy Story was named after him.^{[citation needed]}
Andy has been a Red Sox seasons ticket holder since 1968.^{[citation needed]}