Jim Blinn


James F. Blinn is an American computer scientist who first became widely known for his work as a computer graphics expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, particularly his work on the pre-encounter animations for the Voyager project, his work on the Carl Sagan documentary series , and the research of the Blinn–Phong shading model.
He is credited with formulating Blinn's Law, which asserts that rendering time tends to remain constant, even as computers get faster. Animators prefer to improve quality, rendering more complex scenes with more sophisticated algorithms, rather than using less time to do the same work as before.

Biography

In 1970, he received his bachelor's degree in physics and communications science, and later a master's degree in engineering from the University of Michigan. In 1978 he received a Ph.D. in computer science from the College of Engineering at the University of Utah.
Blinn devised new methods to represent how objects and light interact in a three-dimensional virtual world, like environment mapping and bump mapping. He is well known for creating animation for three television series: Carl Sagan's ; Project MATHEMATICS!; and the pioneering instructional graphics in The Mechanical Universe. His simulations of the Voyager spacecraft visiting Jupiter and Saturn have been seen widely.
Blinn was affiliated with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology until 1995. Thereafter, he joined Microsoft Research, where he was a graphics fellow until his retirement in 2009. Blinn also worked at the New York Institute of Technology during the summer of 1976.

Jim Blinn's Corner

From 1987 to 2007, Blinn wrote a column for IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications called "Jim Blinn's Corner". He wrote a total of 83 columns, most of which were reprinted in these books: