Nelson Max

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{{Infobox scientist

| name = Nelson Max

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| nationality = American

| field = Computer science

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Nelson Max is a professor{{cite web | url=https://faculty.engineering.ucdavis.edu/max/ | title=Webpage for Nelson Max}} of computer science at the University of California at Davis. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1967, advised by Herman Gluck.{{cite web | url=https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=97377 | title=Nelson Max - The Mathematics Genealogy Project}} His research interests include scientific visualization, computer animation, photorealistic computer graphics rendering, multi-view stereo reconstruction, and augmented reality. In his visualization section, he worked on molecular graphics, and volume and flow visualization, particularly on irregular finite element meshes. He has rendered realistic lighting effects in clouds, trees, and water waves, and has produced numerous computer animations, shown at the annual ACM SIGGRAPH conferences, and in OMNIMAX stereo at the Fujitsu Pavilions at Expo ’85 in Tsukuba Japan, and at Expo ’90 in Osaka Japan. He received the prestigious Steven A. Coons Award in 2007,{{cite web | url=https://www.siggraph.org/about/awards/2007-coons-award/ | title=2007 Steven A. Coons Award: Nelson Max}} and is a Fellow of the ACM and a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy.

His computer animation in the early 1970s for the Topology Films Project included the award winning animated films "Space Filling Curves,"{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e8QJBkCwvo | title=Video on Space Filling Curves| website=YouTube| date=23 July 2012}} showing continuous fractal curves that pass through every point in a square, and "Turning a Sphere Inside Out,"{{cite web | url=https://www.crcpress.com/Turning-a-Sphere-Inside-Out-DVD/Max/p/book/9781466553941 | title=Video on Turning a Sphere Inside Out}} showing how to turn a sphere inside out without tearing or creasing the surface, but allowing the surface to cross itself. In photorealistic rendering, he was the first to render beams of light and shadow from atmospheric scattering,{{cite journal | url=https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=15899 | journal=ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics| date=31 August 1986| volume=20| issue=4| pages=117–124| doi=10.1145/15886.15899| last1=Max| first1=Nelson L.| title=Atmospheric illumination and shadows| url-access=subscription}} and developed horizon mapping to render bump shadows on bump-mapped surfaces.{{cite journal | title =The Visual Computer 1988: Horizon mapping: shadows for bump-mapped surfaces| doi =10.1007/BF01905562| s2cid =24001690}} At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1981, he produced the film "Carla's Island"{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUloIyGMM2A | title=Carla's Island| website=YouTube| date=14 February 2018}} showing reflections of the sunset on ocean waves, using vectorized ray tracing on the Cray 1 supercomputer.