Bui Tuong Phong
{{Short description|Vietnamese computer scientist (1942–1975)}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Bùi Tường Phong
| image = Bui-Tuong-Phong.jpg
| image_size = 150px
| caption = Phong in 1969
| birth_date = December 14, 1942
| birth_place = Hanoi, Vietnam
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| death_date = {{Death-date and age|July 1975|December 1942}}
| death_place = California, U.S.
| residence =
| citizenship =
| nationality = Vietnamese
| ethnicity =
| field = Computer science
| work_institutions =
| alma_mater = University of Utah
| doctoral_advisor = Ivan Sutherland
| doctoral_students =
| known_for = {{plainlist|
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{{More citations needed|date=March 2022}}
{{family name hatnote|Bui|Phong|lang=Vietnamese}}
Bui Tuong Phong (December 14, 1942{{Snd}}July 1975) was a Vietnamese-born computer graphics researcher and pioneer. He invented the widely used Phong shading algorithm and Phong reflection model.
Life
Phong was born in Hanoi. After attending the Lycée Albert Sarraut there, he moved with his family to Saigon in 1954, where he attended the {{Ill|Lycée Jean Jacques Rousseau (Saigon)|lt=Lycée Jean Jacques Rousseau|vi|Trường Trung học phổ thông Lê Quý Đôn, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh}}. He went to France in 1964 and was admitted to the Grenoble Institute of Technology. He received his licence ès sciences from Grenoble in 1966 and his Diplôme d'Ingénieur from the ENSEEIHT,{{Citation needed|date=August 2007}} Toulouse, in 1968. In 1968, he joined the {{lang|fr|Institut de recherche en informatique et en automatique}} (then IRIA) as a researcher in Computer Science, working in the development of operating systems for digital computers.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}
He went to the University of Utah College of Engineering in September 1971 as a research assistant in Computer Science and 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}}
In 1975, after his tenure at the University of Utah, Phong joined Stanford University as a professor.{{Cite web |title=View Content |url=http://ulink.utah.edu/s/1077/20/interior.aspx?sid=1077&gid=1&pgid=252&cid=3074&ecid=3074&ciid=9191&crid=0 |access-date=2022-07-16 |website=ulink.utah.edu |language=en}}
Phong was married to Bùi Thị Ngọc Bích from Nha Trang, Vietnam, in 1969 in Paris, France. He and his wife had one daughter.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}
According to Professor Ivan Sutherland and Phong's friends, Phong was intelligent, affable and modest.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}} About improving the quality of synthesized images he wrote: "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."{{Citation |last=Phong |first=Bui Tuong |title=Illumination for Computer Generated Pictures |date=1975 |work=Communications of the ACM |volume=18 |issue=6 |pages=311-317 |year= |url=https://users.cs.northwestern.edu/~ago820/cs395/Papers/Phong_1975.pdf |access-date= |publisher= |last2= |first2= |author-link= |author2-link=}}.
Two years after receiving his Ph.D., Phong died in 1975 from complications related to squamous cell carcinoma.
Work on computer graphics
Phong was the inventor of the Phong reflection model and the Phong shading interpolation method, techniques widely used in computer graphics. He published the description of the algorithms in his 1973 PhD dissertationBui 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 developed the first algorithm for simulating specular phenomena. 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, including 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.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}
Phong, Robert McDermott, Jim Clark and Raphael Rom had created the very first computer graphics–generated picture that looked like its physical model: the Volkswagen Beetle. As a computer graphics icon, it still crops up in highly respected journals and animated features.{{cite web|first=Robert |last=McDermott |page=7 |url=http://www.cs.utah.edu/news/teapot/archives/fall03.pdf |title=Robert Remembers: The VW Bug |publisher=University of Utah Dept. of Computer Science |year=2003 |accessdate=2009-10-08 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091229045948/http://www.cs.utah.edu/news/teapot/archives/fall03.pdf |archivedate=December 29, 2009 }}
See also
References
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Category:Computer graphics researchers
Category:Vietnamese expatriates in the United States
Category:Expatriate academics in the United States
Category:20th-century Vietnamese scientists
Category:University of Utah alumni