Alvy Ray Smith

Alvy Ray Smith III (born September 8, 1943) is an American computer scientist who co-founded Lucasfilm's Computer Division and Pixar, participating in the 1980s and 1990s expansion of computer animation into feature film. Education In 1965 Alvy Smith received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from New Mexico State University (NMSU). He created his first computer graphic in 1965 at NMSU. In 1970 he received a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University, with a dissertation on cellular automata theory jointly supervised by Michael A. Arbib, Edward J. McCluskey, and Bernard Widrow. Career His first art show was at the Stanford Coffeehouse. From 1969 to 1973 he was an associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at New York University, under chairman Herbert Freeman, one of the earliest computer graphics researchers. He taught briefly at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. While at Xerox PARC in 1974, Smith worked with Richard Shoup on SuperPaint, one of the first computer raster graphics editor, or 'paint', programs. Smith's major contribution to this software was the creation of the HSV color space, also known as HSB. He created his first computer animations on the SuperPaint system.