Bill Gosper
Ralph William (Bill) Gosper, Jr., an American mathematician and computer scientist, along with Richard Greenblatt considered the co-founder of the hacker community [2].
In the 60s, affiliated with MIT, he worked for Project MAC (Machine-Aided Cognition), where his contributions to computational mathematics and Bit-Twiddling including HAKMEM and Maclisp. He helped Greenblatt with his chess program Mac Hack VI, and operated the PDP-6 when Robert Q played its first tournament game versus Carl Wagner. In the 70s, Bill Gosper moved to Stanford University for some years, where he lectured and helped Donald Knuth to write volume II of The Art of Computer Programming. He has worked at or consulted for Xerox PARC, Symbolics, Wolfram Research, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Macsyma [3]. Bill Gosper created numerous packing problem puzzles such as the Twubblesome Twelve [4], and was interested in the Conway's of Life], where he found the Gun] and originated the [1]] algorithm to speed up the computation of Life patterns [5].
Contents
Robert Q
Allen Moulton and R. William Gosper operating "Robert Q" on a PDP-6 [6]
HAKMEM
HAKMEM, alternatively known as AI Memo 239, is a February 1972 "memo" (technical report) of the MIT AI Lab by Gosper et al. that describes a wide variety of hacks, primarily useful and clever algorithms [7], and even a chess position [8] [9]. A few samples, referred elsewhere:
HAKMEM 70
HAKMEM 70 [10], A neat chess problem, swiped from Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood, by Edward Lasker [11]. White mates in three moves:
♗ ♙ ♟ ♘ ♚♙ ♔ |
5B2/6P1/1p6/8/1N6/kP6/2K5/8 w - -
HAKMEM 169
HAKMEM 169, to count the ones in a PDP-6/PDP-10 36-bit word, written in Assembly [12] [13]:
LDB B,[014300,,A] ;or MOVE B,A then LSH B,-1 AND B,[333333,,333333] SUB A,B LSH B,-1 AND B,[333333,,333333] SUBB A,B ;each octal digit is replaced by number of 1's in it LSH B,-3 ADD A,B AND A,[070707,,070707] IDIVI A,77 ;casting out 63.'s
HAKMEM 175
HAKMEM 175 - next higher number with the same number of one bits (Snoob), by Bill Gosper, PDP-6 Assembly [14]:
MOVE B,A MOVN C,B AND C,B ADD A,C MOVE D,A XOR D,B LSH D,-2 IDIVM D,C IOR A,C
Gosper's Glider Gun
Gosper's Glider Gun in action — a variation of Conway's Game of Life [15]
See also
Selected Publications
- Michael Beeler, Bill Gosper, Rich Schroeppel (1972). HAKMEM, Memo 239. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology [16]
- Bill Gosper (1977). Decision procedure for indefinite hypergeometric summation. PNAS USA, Vol. 75, No. 1, pdf [17]
External Links
References
- ↑ Mathematician Bill Gosper in March, 2006 at the Seventh Gathering for Gardner (G4G7) in Atlanta, Georgia, March 16, 2006, Photographer Thane Plambeck
- ↑ Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- ↑ Bill Gosper from Wikipedia
- ↑ Twubblesome Twelve - a difficult puzzle by Bill Gosper
- ↑ Gosper's Algorithm (Hashlife) explained
- ↑ MIT Computer Loses to Human in Chess. Sun Journal (Lewiston), January 23, 1967, Google News
- ↑ HAKMEM from Wikipedia
- ↑ Michael Beeler, Bill Gosper, Rich Schroeppel (1972). HAKMEM, Memo 239. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- ↑ HAKMEMC -- HAKMEM Programming hacks in C by Alan Mycroft
- ↑ HAKMEM - GAMES: ITEM 70
- ↑ Edward Lasker (1942,1962) Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood. Dover Publications; 2 Edition, ISBN-13: 978-0486201467, amazon
- ↑ HAKMEM 169 by Gosper, Mann, Lenard, (Root and Mann), HAKMEM
- ↑ PDP-10 Machine Language
- ↑ HAKMEM 175 by Bill Gosper
- ↑ Bill Gosper's Glider Gun in action — a variation of Conway's Game of Life. This image was made by using Life32 v2.15 beta by Johan G. Bontes, 2005, Gun (cellular automaton) from Wikipedia
- ↑ Web-available by Henry Baker
- ↑ Gosper's algorithm from Wikipedia
