J. Turner Whitted
About J. Turner Whitted
- Also Known As
- Turner Whitted
- Affiliations
- NVIDIA
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- TWI Research LLC
- Bell Laboratories
- Location
- Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America
- Bio
John Turner Whitted is an electrical engineer and computer scientist who introduced recursive ray tracingto the computer graphics community with his 1979 paper “An improved illumination model for shaded display”. His algorithm proved to be a practical method of simulating global illumination, inspired many variations, and is in wide use today. Simple recursive implementations of ray tracing are still occasionally referred to as Whitted-style ray tracing.
Whitted was born in Durham, North Carolina and grew up in Winston-Salem. Whitted took his BSE and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Duke University, then received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1978 and joined Bell Labs.
In December 1983, Whitted co-founded computer graphics technology firm Numerical Design Limited (NDL) with Dr. Robert Whitton. Whitted would serve as president and technical director at NDL until 1996, and continue as a director of the company until NDL’s merger with Emergent Game Technologies in 2005.
He later worked at Microsoft Research, and in 2014 joined NVidia Research. Whitted is currently an Adjunct Research Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and was awarded the Steven Anson Coons Award for Outstanding Creative Contributions to Computer Graphics from SIGGRAPH in 2013. (Wikipedia)
SIGGRAPH 1990
Turner Whitted is founder and Technical Director of Numerical Design, Ltd., and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina. He received a PhD in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 1978. He was formerly with the Computer Systems Research Laboratory of Bell Laboratories. Turner is the 1986 winner of the prestigious Computer Graphics Achievement Award, given by ACM SIGGRAPH in recognition of outstanding contributions to the discipline of computer graphics.
SIGGRAPH 1982
Turner Whitted is a member of the technical staff in the image Processing and Display Research Department of Bell Laboratories. He is a graduate of Duke University and received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.
OTHER AFFILIATIONS: Numerical Design Limited
SIGGRAPH Conference Organizing Committee Positions
- Committee Member
- SIGGRAPH 1998: Panels
- Jury Member
- SIGGRAPH 2021: Appy Hour
- SIGGRAPH 2020: Appy Hour
- SIGGRAPH 2021: Emerging Technologies
- SIGGRAPH 2020: Emerging Technologies
- SIGGRAPH 2003: Emerging Technologies
- SIGGRAPH 2002: Emerging Technologies
- SIGGRAPH 2014: Appy Hour
- SIGGRAPH 2014: Studio
- SIGGRAPH 2014: Emerging Technologies
- SIGGRAPH 2020: Labs
- SIGGRAPH 2021: Labs
- SIGGRAPH 2003: Technical Papers
- SIGGRAPH 2014: Talks
- SIGGRAPH 2020: Talks
- SIGGRAPH 2021: Talks
- SIGGRAPH 2021: Panels
- SIGGRAPH 2020: Panels
- SIGGRAPH 2014: Panels
- SIGGRAPH 2014: Courses
Conference Contributions
- Artworks
-
[Animation and Video]Artist(s):
[2D and Wall-Hung]Artist(s):
[2D and Wall-Hung]Artist(s): - Animations / Videos
- Experiences
- Presentations
-
- Sessions Moderated
- “Ray tracing trimmed rational surface patches” by Nishita, Sederberg and Kakimoto
- “Generalized B-spline surfaces of arbitrary topology” by Loop and DeRose
- “Rendering and animation of gaseous phenomena by combining fast volume and scanline A-buffer techniques” by Ebert and Parent
- “Footprint evaluation for volume rendering” by Westover
- “Volume Rendering”
- “The haptic lens” by Sinclair
- “Practical SIMD” by Bryant
- “Delivering high quality 3D to every desk” by Humphrey and Ahsan
- “A low-cost digital panoramic camera” by Sinclair
- Courses Organized
- “Advanced (3D) Raster Graphics” by Crow, Blinn, Catmull, Fuchs, Clark, et al. …
- “Advanced Image Synthesis” by Whitted, Blinn, Williams and Feibush
- “Image Rendering Tricks” by Whitted, Cook, Hall, Blinn and Carpenter
- “Advanced Image Synthesis” by Fuchs, Whitted, Crow and Max
- “Introduction to Raster Graphics” by Crow, Clark, Whitted, Fuchs, Levine, et al. …
- “User Interfaces to Graphics Systems” by Whitted, Smith, Catmull, Fuchs, Williams, et al. …
SIGGRAPH Organization Contributions
- Community Events
- 2023 Pioneer Interview: Turner Whitted
Other Information
- Roles
- ACM SIGGRAPH Academy Member
- Art Show Artist
- Awardee
- Conference Support Committee Member: General Jury
- Course Organizer
- Course Presenter
- Emerging Technologies Jury Member
- Emerging Technologies Presenter
- Panel Presenter
- Panels Organizing Committee Member
- Retrospective Presenter
- Special Session Presenter
- Talk (Sketch) Moderator
- Technical Paper Presenter
- Technical Papers Jury Member
- Technical Papers Organizing Committee Chair/Co-Chair
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