Ed Catmull

Dr. Ed Catmull (b. March 31, 1945) is one of the co-founders of Pixar. He was President and CTO of Pixar and now is President of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios.

Early Years
When Catmull was young, he wanted to become an animator for Disney. But in high school he realized he wasn't good at drawing, so he began to focus on computers. He felt that the newly emerging field of computer graphics could be used to create a full-length animated film.

He received his bachelor degree in computer science in 1969 from went to college at the University of Utah. After a short stint at Boeing he came back to the University to get his doctoral degree. His focus was computer graphics and three-dimensional curves. During this time he came up with a number of contributions to the field. These include the study of bicubic patches and development of the Z-buffer to help computers determine which parts of an object are hidden from view and which should be visible, plus the invention of texture mapping, where an image can be applied to the surface of an object. Catmull received his Ph.D. in 1974.

New York Institute of Technology
After receiving his Ph.D., Catmull took a programming job at a small CAD software company. But he knew this was not what he was interested in. Fortunately, a short while later he was invited to become the head of the Computer Graphics Lab at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), which was founded by Alexander Schure. Schure wanted the lab devoted to researching computer animation. This was exactly what Catmull was looking for, so in November of 1974 he became Director of the lab. He brought with him a co-worker, Malcolm Blanchard, and then hired Alvy Ray Smith and David DiFrancesco, both from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).