
Bert Sutherland Has Died - dang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Sutherland
======
alankay
I knew Bert for well over 50 years, and the first word that comes to mind to
describe him is "lovable", and the second is "foundational".

It is too early for those of us who loved him to recount "Bert stories" and
especially "Bert and Ivan" stories, but Dan has provided the links to the
YouTube video CHM tribute to the two brothers. Everyone should also read the
Wikipedia article about Bert.

Bert's PhD thesis is most often characterized by its title "Online Graphical
Specification Of Procedures", but once you look at it you realize that he was
one of the first (if not the first) inventor of "dataflow" programs, and in
fact this thesis was central to the many "prior art" definitions to quash
lawsuits about dataflow ideas.

Another dimension to Bert's scientific and engineering career that is not
mentioned enough is that he was one of the earliest and main drivers of what
is called CAD today (a rather small number of people in different places made
this happen in the early 60s -- including Bert's brother Ivan -- and Bert
focused some of the powerful human and computing resources of Lincoln Labs on
this vital technology).

Bert's personality was sunny, friendly, and "sweetly firm", to the point that
many people clamored to have him as their manager (including only half-
jokingly: Ivan). I was completely thrilled when Parc brought in Bert to run
the Systems Science Lab in which my group, Lynn Conway's group, Bill English's
group etc were all ensconced.

Bert, as with the other enlightened ARPA research managers knew that "the
geese wanted to lay their golden eggs" and the manager's job was to support
these efforts, not to try to tell the geese how to lay the special eggs). He
was superb at this, and many critical inventions and systems happened because
he was the nurturer.

I guess I should tell a "Bert and Ivan" story. Their father was a civil
engineer who brought not just blueprints home but gadgets and kits for the two
brothers -- who were just two years apart in age -- to play with. Bert would
recall that Ivan was so smart that he would just start putting the stuff
together while Bert read the manual. At the 95% point Ivan would get stuck and
Bert would know what to do next. The two brothers with very different
personalities got along wonderfully well over their entire lives, and would
occasionally do a company together.

A big deal when the kids were young was their mother driving them down from
Scarsdale to Murray Hill to Bell Labs to meet Claude Shannon. Years later at
MIT, Shannon wound up being a thesis supervisor of both of their PhDs done a
few years apart.

I think most of us from 50+ years ago in the ARPA community just revered and
were in awe of the research generations that came before us, especially the
one right before us. It was tough to do computing back then, but they didn't
let this bother them at all. They would program anything they wanted to have
happen -- mostly in machine code -- and they would design and build any
hardware they needed to run the programs they needed -- mostly with discrete
components and relatively high voltages over sometimes acres of computer.

They showed us how to work and play and design and sculpt and the deep art
that lies behind the components. We can never thank them enough, and can only
"pay forward" by helping those who come after us.

~~~
sprafa
Claude Shannon teaching them makes them essentially computer science royalty.

------
dang
A 1966 demo of his pioneering Ph.D. work on interactive visual programming:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLyIYmPfCps](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLyIYmPfCps).

His Ph.D. dissertation is here:
[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/13474](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/13474).
It was some of the earliest work on dataflow and graphical programming. I know
this because Alan Kay told me to read it, so I did. You should too.

Edit: Bert, of course, was Ivan Sutherland's (of Sketchpad) older brother.
There's a delightful dialogue with the two of them from 2004:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1bNR4DmhU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1bNR4DmhU)
("Mom Loved Him Best: Bert & Ivan Sutherland").

~~~
lallysingh
Isn't that his younger brother Ivan?

~~~
andai
Looks like they were doing pretty similar work! Here's Ivan's Sketchpad
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orsmFndx_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orsmFndx_o)

~~~
alankay
Please take the trouble to look more closely at what they did, and when.

------
7402
I grew up across the street from the Sutherlands in the 1960's and early 70's.
Bert Sutherland gave me and my brother our Novice Class Amateur Radio exams,
and set us up with some old antennas of his (including a rather nice tri-
bander beam antenna with rotator, which he helped my father strap to our
chimney). Later, in high school, when I was interested in computers, he let me
log into his account at BB&N from the terminal in his garage. He showed me a
few things, including "wheel mode" (essentially root access) to the systems,
and then left me alone with it, saying only, "Now, I expect you to be a good
citizen." When I was in college, he helped get me a part-time programming job
at BB&N.

This was huge. In hindsight, I'm amazed he trusted me as a teenager that way,
but having been given that trust I never abused it. I'm forever grateful for
the way he helped me get started on a path that I've followed my whole life.

------
rococode
Here are some tweets about it:

[https://twitter.com/search?q=Bert%20Sutherland&src=typed_que...](https://twitter.com/search?q=Bert%20Sutherland&src=typed_query&f=live)

This one appears to be the first (18 hours ago):

[https://twitter.com/harrymccracken/status/123000105692436070...](https://twitter.com/harrymccracken/status/1230001056924360708)

The Computer History Museum has since tweeted about it:

[https://twitter.com/ComputerHistory/status/12302002771412500...](https://twitter.com/ComputerHistory/status/1230200277141250050)

~~~
KerrickStaley
Thanks! The Computer History Museum seems like a reliable source on this.

I've added their tweet as a citation on the Wikipedia page.

------
kashyapc
"Unlike traditional corporate research managers, Sutherland added individuals
from fields like psychology, cognitive science, and anthropology to enhance
the work of his technology staff."

/me wonders how many 'modern' managers approach their work with that kind of
sensibility.

~~~
52-6F-62
They do bring in people from other various disciplines, but most of the time
you'll find those people in product management/ownership roles or "scrum
leaders" or something. Usually not using their accumulated knowledge for much
outside of communicating clearly and navigating politics enough to hold a job.

We definitely don't see enough deference to those fields of expertise, I
think.

------
suyash
We are losing some great people in our industry, big shoes to fill for others.
RIP Bert.

------
jecel
The Computer History Museum has just posted the video of a four hour interview
with Bert from 2017:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZJxwzVx5BY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZJxwzVx5BY)

------
RickJWagner
Wow, that's quite a wikipage.

He seems like a neat guy.

------
kianigreycliff
Rest in peace

------
KerrickStaley
EDIT: Citation has been found, see comments.

Just a note: the Wikipedia article currently doesn't cite any sources stating
that he has died, and I wasn't able to find anything on the internet. So it's
not totally clear at this moment that the title is true.

~~~
dang
I'm basing this on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22363476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22363476)
and the fact that the Wikipedia article has a precise date. I sure hope it
isn't wrong; that would be awful. I also emailed Alan to ask if he had a
minute to come and post about it, because moments like this are learning
occasions for younger (and not so younger) community members who don't know
the history.

------
1zael
Dang a lot of people are dying today :(

------
craftyguy
These 'XYZ has died' posts should nearly include a short description of who
the person was in the title.

~~~
saagarjha
They almost always link to a page that do this.

