Interview Transcript – Donald Knuth [pdf]
Lining up this interview was a process that spanned the latter half of 2020. Professor Knuth has not maintained a public email inbox since 1990, so I typeset a letter in LaTeX, printed it out, figured out where to put a stamp on an envelope, and sent it to Professor Knuth&#x27;s office. Some months later, I received an email from his assistant, saying that he would be interested in doing an interview, but wouldn&#x27;t be available until December. Well, a couple of weeks ago I found myself on the phone clutching a list of questions that I prepared in consultation with a friend of mine pursing a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Chicago, and thus could understand not just the pictures in The Art of Computer Programming, but also most of the words (where my abilities begin to falter).