John Rischard Rice (June 6, 1934 – January 7, 2024) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. He was the W. Brooks Fortune Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and a professor of mathematics (by courtesy) atPurdue University. He specialized innumerical computing, founded theACM Transactions on Mathematical Software and was the author of more than 20 books and approximately 300 research articles.[1][2][3]
Rice was born on June 6, 1934, inTulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up in small towns in Oklahoma.[2][3] As a teenager, his father was assigned toAddis Ababa,Ethiopia, where he lived for three years.[3] He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics fromOklahoma State University in 1954 and 1956;[2] while studying there, he spent his summers in southern California, working in the aerospace industry.[3] He then moved to theCalifornia Institute of Technology, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1959 under the supervision ofArthur Erdélyi; his dissertation concernedapproximation theory.[2][3][4] After taking a one-year postdoctoral position at theNational Bureau of Standards, he became a researcher forGeneral Motors.[2][3] In 1964 he left GM and joined the recently founded computer science department at Purdue, which he later headed from 1983 to 1996[2][3]
Rice organized the first Symposium on Mathematical Software atPurdue University in 1970, which produced the recommendation to start a journal for the field.[5] This led to the founding ofACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) in 1975, of which Rice would be editor-in-chief until 1993.[1][2] He was chair of theComputing Research Association from 1991 to 1993.[1][2][6]
Rice died at home on January 7, 2024, at the age of 89.[7]
Rice showed an early interest in computing, publishing a paper titled "Electronic Brains" as a college sophomore.[2] Although his early research was on the mathematics of approximation theory,[2][3] he spent most of his career working in theanalysis of algorithms for solving numerical problems, and particularly on the solution ofelliptic partial differential equations.[1][3]
Rice'sIntroduction to Computer Science (with J. K. Rice, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1969) was the "leading textbook of the day"[2] and emphasized general principles ofalgorithms anddata structures rather than specificprogramming languages, the focus of previous introductory CS texts.[3] It was translated into three other languages.[8]
Rice's other books include:[1]
Rice was named the Brooks Fortune Professor in 1989.[2] In 1994, he was elected a member of theNational Academy of Engineering for his "for leadership in founding the field of mathematical software and for fundamental contributions to its content".[2] He is also aFellow of the AAAS and a Fellow of theAssociation for Computing Machinery.[1][2]
