REMEMBERING JOHN WARNOCK

AS A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT AT OLYMPUS HIGH IN SALT LAKE CITY, CO-FOUNDER AND FORMER CEO OF ADOBE JOHN WARNOCK , WHO PASSED AWAY AUGUST 19TH AT AGE 82, FOUND A MENTOR IN MATH TEACHER GEORGE BARTON. “HIS APPROACH WAS REALLY QUITE SIMPLE,” WARNOCK ONCE RECALLED.

“He instructed us to pick up a college level textbook for algebra, solve every problem in the book, then move on to the next subject, trigonometry, and do the same. And after that, go on to analytic geometry. By following his advice and solving a lot of problems, my gardes in math and all other classes improed, and I went from C's to A's and B's."

The auspicious career of Warnock and other brilliant University of Utah alumni who changed the world through computer science was in high relief last year when a sampling of the scrappy and now legendary bunch assembled on campus to commemorate their roles as 3-D graphics pioneers. The occasion was a celebration of 50 years of the U’s Kahlert School of Computing, and Warnock was presented with an IEEE Milestone award.

But before he was known as the co-founder with the late Charles Geschke of Adobe, Warnock was propelled by his high school teacher into the U’s math department. There Warnock earned a BS and MS in mathematics before decamping to the College of Engineering where he earned a PhD in electrical engineering/ computer science. It was an exciting time. The U was one of 15 renowned universities that had a contract with the Advanced Research Projects Agency, prompted by the worrisome launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite during the Eisenhower era. A node on the original internet known as ARAPNET, the U was the first university to offer online registration to its students, and Warnock, as part of his dissertation research was busy at work, just days (and long nights), ahead of when the portal dropped, having developed the recursive subdivision algorithm for hidden surface elimination that made computer graphics possible and that would eventually carry his name.

Twenty-five years post Sputnik, Adobe launched which, inarguably, lofted desktop publishing into the stratosphere with its soon-to-launch PostScript language. The information technology sector has never been the same since, epitomized by Warnock’s appeal to the U students during the 2020 commencement: "The rest of your life is not a spectator sport. Your job in life is to be an active player, to make the world a better place.”

Warnock is survived by his wife and three children. <

The Warnock Chair, endowed in 2001 by John and Marva Warnock, supports early career faculty in mathematics, attracting outstanding talent and enhancing departmental excellence. It is hard to overstate the impact that this has had, and will continue to have, on the growth and excellence of the Department.