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American computer scientist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edward Westbrook Veitch (4 November 1924 – 23 December 2013[1]) was an American computer scientist. He graduated from Harvard University in 1946 with a degree in Physics, followed by graduate degrees from Harvard in Physics and Applied Physics in 1948 and 1949 respectively. In his 1952 paper "A Chart Method for Simplifying Truth Functions",[2] Veitch described a graphical procedure for the optimization of logic circuits, which is referred to as Veitch chart. A year later (in 1953), the method was refined in a paper by Maurice Karnaugh[3] into what became known as Karnaugh map (K-map) or Karnaugh–Veitch map (KV-map).
Edward Westbrook Veitch | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | 23 December 2013 89) | (aged
Citizenship | American |
Alma mater | Harvard University |
Known for | optimization of digital circuits |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Computer science |
Veitch wrote about the development of the Veitch diagram and its interpretation:
It was known that one way to represent the function was as points on the corners of an n-dimensional cube. Two adjacent corners such as the two on the upper right could be defined as the upper right corners and the four corners on the front of the cube could be defined as the front corners. For four, five, or six variables the problem becomes more complicated.
Depicting a multi-dimensional cube on a flat diagram that makes it easy to see these relationships:
In a last minute change before his presentation Veitch removed the spacing between the 2×2 cell groups. This was a poor decision because it made it more difficult for the user to grasp the overall structure of the function, as well as the rules Veitch used in recognizing simplifications. In his last years before his death in 2013,[1] Veitch learned from solving Sudoku puzzles that spaces or heavy lines between groups of boxes can be very helpful especially if one has poor eyesight, such as Veitch had.
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