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Tom Duff

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Canadian computer programmer (born 1952)

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For other people named Thomas Duff, seeThomas Duff (disambiguation).

Thomas Douglas Selkirk Duff
Tom Duff in his office at Pixar in 2006
Born	(1952-12-08)December 8, 1952 (age 72) Toronto
Occupation	Computer programmer
Years active	1974-2021
Known for	Animation software
Notable work	Duff's device

Thomas Douglas Selkirk Duff (born December 8, 1952) is a Canadiancomputer programmer.

Life and career

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Early life

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Duff was born inToronto,Ontario, Canada, and was named for his putative ancestor,the fifth Earl of Selkirk. He grew up in Toronto andLeaside. In 1974 he graduated from theUniversity of Waterloo with aB.Math and, two years later, was awarded an M.Sc. from theUniversity of Toronto.

Programming career

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Duff worked at theNew York Institute of Technology Computer Graphics Lab and theMark Williams Company inChicago before moving toLucasfilm's Computer Research and Development Division. He andThomas Porter, another Lucasfilm employee, developed a new approach tocompositing images; their 1984 paper, "Compositing Digital Images",^[1] is "[t]he seminal work on an algebra for image compositing", according toKeith Packard,^[2] and "Porter-Duff compositing" is now a key technique in computer graphics. (See, for example,XRender and Glitz.)

Duff later worked for 12 years atBell Labs Computing Science Research Center, where he worked on computer graphics, wireless networking, andPlan 9;^[3] in the course of his work there, he authored the well known "rc"shell for theVersion 10 Unix operating system.

Duff worked atPixar Animation Studios from 1996 until his retirement in 2021.^[4]

Achievements

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In 1995, he was awarded (with others) the Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for his work on digital image compositing. WithBill Reeves he designed the first version ofPixar'sMarionette 3-D animation system, which won the same award in 1997.
While working at Lucasfilm, he createdDuff's device, aloop unrolling mechanism inC.
On August 22, 2006, theUnited States Patent and Trademark Office issuedU.S. patent 7,095,409 toPixar for a "Shot shading method and apparatus" invented by Tom Duff andRobert L. Cook.
On October 31, 2006, theUnited States Patent and Trademark Office issuedU.S. patent 7,129,940 toPixar for a "Shot rendering method and apparatus" invented by Tom Duff andRobert L. Cook.
In 2015 he became the 21st awardee of theJ.W. Graham Medal, named in honor ofWes Graham an early influential Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, and annually awarded to an influential alumnus of the University's Faculty of Mathematics.^[5]

In the media

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Tom Duff makes acameo appearance in theNiven/Pournelle science fiction novelFootfall as a co-discoverer of the invading spaceship: "Chap named Tom Duff, a computer type, spotted it."
Tom Duff appears briefly in the documentary film "Noisy People" (dirTim Perkis, 2006) playing the banjo.^[6]