Bui Tuong Phong

Bui Tuong Phong (Vietnamese: "Bùi Tường Phong", 1942–1975) was a Vietnamese-born computer graphics researcher and pioneer. His publications are most often referenced using his family name, Bùi, which comes before his given name by Vietnamese name convention, but his inventions are remembered under his given name Phong, since it is conventional to address Vietnamese persons by their given name.

Life

He was born December 14, 1942 in Hanoi, Vietnam. After attending the Lycee Albert Sarraut there, he moved with his family to Saigon in 1954, where he attended the Lycee Jean Jacques Rousseau. He went to France in 1964 and was admitted to the Ecole d’Ingenieur de Grenoble (ENSEHRMAG). He received his Licence es Science from Grenoble in 1966 and his Diplome d’Ingenieur from the ENSEEIHTFact|date=August 2007, Toulouse, in 1968. In 1968 he joined the Institut de Recherche d’Ingenieur et d’Automatique (IRIA) as a Researcher in Computer Science, working in the development of operating systems for digital computers. He came to the University of Utah in September 1971 as a Research Assistant in Computer Science.

Tragically, Phong knew that he was terminally ill while he was a student. In 1975, after his tenture at the University of Utah, Phong joined Stanford as a professor; he died of Leukemia not long after finishing his dissertation.

Mr. Bui Tuong Phong was married to Ms. Bui Thi Ngoc Bich from Nha Trang, 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 his work in computer generated images he remarked: "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."

Work on computer graphics

Dr. Phong was the inventor of the Phong reflection model and the Phong shading interpolation method, techniques widely used in computer graphics. Bui Tuong published the description of the algorithms in his 1973 PhD dissertation [Bui Tuong Phong, "Illumination of Computer-Generated Images", Department of Computer Science, University of Utah, UTEC-CSs-73-129, July 1973.] and a 1975 paper [Bui Tuong Phong, "Illumination for Computer Generated Pictures," Comm. ACM, Vol 18(6):311-317, June 1975.] . He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1973 [cite web
url=http://www.cs.utah.edu/dept/history/#phong-ref
title=University of Utah - History of the School of Computing
publisher=University of Utah
date=2007-06-07
accessdate=2007-08-26] .

He developed the first algorithm for simulating specular phenomenon. When working on his doctorate, he was very focused on selecting a topic and completing his dissertation very fast. Professor David C. Evans very enthusiastically supported him in this project. Professor Ivan Sutherland worked with him for improving the previous Mach banding problems, and on using normals for shading. His fellow students also supported him very much, as 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, McDermott, Jim Clark and Raphael Rom had created the very first computer graphics generated picture that looked like its physical model: the VW bug. As a computer graphics icon, it still crops up in highly respected journals and animated features.Fact|date=October 2007

References