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  • 2012 Kyoto Prize Awarded to Ivan Sutherland
  • Akihiko Yamada

Ivan Sutherland has been awarded the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology from the field of information science. The presentation ceremony was held on 10 November 2012, at the Kyoto International Conference Center in downtown Kyoto (see Figure 2). The Kyoto Prize is an international award, founded by Kazuo Inamori, that has been presented annually since 1985 by the Inamori Foundation in three categories to honor those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind.

Sutherland’s received the award for “pioneering achievements in the development of computer graphics and interactive interfaces.” His citation further explained he “has been responsible for many pioneering advances and fundamental contributions to the computer graphics technology used for information presentation, as well as the interactive interfaces that allow people to utilize computers without the need for programming.”

Within each broad category, the prize rotates among subfields—for example, the technology prize rotates across electronics, biotechnology, materials science and engineering, and information science. For the basic science category, Yoshinori Ohsumi of the Tokyo Institute of Technology was honored with the prize from the field of life sciences (molecular biology, cell biology, and neurobiology). In the arts and philosophy category, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak of Columbia University was awarded from the field of thought and ethics.

At the ceremony, each laureate was presented with a diploma, a Kyoto Prize Medal (20-Karat gold), and prize money of 50 million yen (approximately $588,000) per category.

Following the presentation ceremony, commemorative lectures were given on 11 November and commemorative workshops were held on 12 November. The theme of the Advanced Technology Workshop was “Extrapolating the Future from the Origin of Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality Technologies.” Fujio Yamaguchi, professor emeritus of Waseda University, introduced Sutherland. (Yamaguchi studied at Utah University under Sutherland.) The lecture was titled “Let Us Distinguish the Medium from the Message.”

First Sutherland introduced Sketchpad, a revolutionary interactive computer-aided design (CAD) program written in 1963 during the course of his doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He used a large Lincoln TX2 computer with a vector scan graphic display and a light pen for graphical input to implement and run the program. Most of today’s CAD programs and computer graphics could trace their [End Page 70] origins back to Sketchpad. The users could directly manipulate figures on a screen through a light pen.

Sutherland emphasized the importance to distinguish the medium of computer graphics from its message in his lecture, in contrast to the phrase “the medium is message” coined by Marshall McLuhan. When he moved to the University of Utah in the late 1960s, 3D line drawings were available in computers but with little message. Today’s computer graphics carry valuable content, and message-centric use is popular. Sutherland argued that computer graphics is a tool and what’s really new is that computers reveal invisible things. As his favorite example, he showed computer axial tomography, which he mentioned as a magnificent medium to deliver a life-saving message.

Two lectures followed: “Interactive Computer Graphics as Design Tools for the Rest of Us” by Takeo Igarashi of the University of Tokyo and “Medical Augmented Reality: From Early Concepts to First Deployments in Operating Rooms” by Nassir Navab of the Technical University of Munich. Finally, a panel discussion, “The Present that Dr. Sutherland Afforded Us and the Future That We Create Together,” was moderated by Michitake Hirose of the University of Tokyo. Sutherland, Igarashi, and Navab joined the panel.

On 13 November, the Youth Development Program Kids’ Science “Never Too Young for Engineering” was held in Inamori Center at Kyoto University. During the program, Sutherland spoke to approximately 100 sixth grade students about his early scientific life and demonstrated the wonders and fascinations of science through experiments involving the children.

Sutherland joined Portland State University in 2009 as a visiting scientist. He and his wife Marly Roncken founded the university’s Asynchronous Research Center and are leading the research in asynchronous systems. He also received the ACM Turing Award for his pioneering and visionary contributions to computer graphics in 1988.

Akihiko Yamada
Akihiko Yamada is a principal...

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