The point in polygon problem for arbitrary polygons I believe was first solved by Robert Sedgewick and published in his awesome algorithms book... it is discussed here...
http://bit.ly/i1u1
In most computer applications today we assume we can easily tell whether or not a point is within (or without)...
But I think Robert published the first algorithm on how...
Yes me too. I still believe that the godfather is Knuth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth think
But as you highlight Sedgewick to me was more readable and applicable to the code I was writing in the early 90s.
