Pioneers: Interview Jim Blinn

James F. Blinn is an American computer scientist who first became widely known for his work as a computer graphics expert at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), particularly his work on the pre-encounter animations for the Voyager project, his work on the 1980 Carl Sagan documentary series Cosmos, and research for the Blinn–Phong shading model. Blinn devised new methods to represent how objects and light interact in a three-dimensional virtual world, like environment mapping and bump mapping. He is well known for creating animation for three television series: Carl Sagan‘s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage; Project MATHEMATICS!; and the pioneering instructional graphics in The Mechanical Universe. His simulations of the Voyager spacecraft visiting Jupiter and Saturn have been seen widely. Blinn was affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology until 1995. Thereafter, he joined Microsoft Research, where he was a graphics fellow until his retirement in 2009. Blinn also worked at the New York Institute of Technology. (Wikipedia)