Catmull decided to become a doctoral student at his Alma Mater, the University of Utah computer science department, which had been started in 1965 by Dave Evans. Among the department’s early faculty was Ivan Sutherland, who for his doctoral thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had developed a system called Sketchpad, that allowed users to sketch black-and-white engineering drawing with a light pen and a computer display, the book informs.

Evans and his colleagues encouraged their students to undertake their own research, gave them autonomy and “treated them as professionals, treating them as top-flight researchers who just happened not to have Ph.D.’s yet.” And the students achieved major advances, writes Price.

One example he mentions is that of Henri Gouraud, a student from France, who developed ‘a superior way to calculate the shading of curved three-dimensional objects, one that made the objects look far smoother than had been possible before.’

Another example is of Bui Tuong Phong, from Vietnam, who was ‘the first to conceive a method for creating objects with realistic-looking illumination and highlights.’ Gouraud shading and Phong lighting are still used in graphics software today, the author adds.

Alan Kay, who taught Catmull’s first programming course, envisioned among other things, ‘object-oriented programming and the point-and-click graphical user interface, both of them now ubiquitous.’ A quote of Kay about Catmull, that the book cites, is on how the student had the habit of going beyond the call of an assignment for fun: “He just liked to program, and usually would add things to the assignments that he thought about along the way. This is always a good sign.” Back in the department, Catmull had a new idea that had its roots in his childhood dream: “Computers might allow him to do animation after all. With computer graphics, he could create not just individual images, but feature-length animated films.” That was a time when computer animation was sort of ‘on the lunatic fringe,’ observes Price.