Patrick Hanrahan, a Stanford University professor best known in Seattle tech as the co-founder of Tableau Software, was awarded the A.M. Turing Award along with Pixar Animation Studios co-founder Edwin Catmull “for fundamental contributions to 3-D computer graphics” and the impact of their work on filmmaking, video games, virtual reality, and other fields.
“Ed Catmull and Pat Hanrahan have fundamentally influenced the field of computer graphics through conceptual innovation and contributions to both software and hardware,” wrote the Association for Computing Machinery in announcing the Turing Award on Wednesday morning. “Their work has had a revolutionary impact on filmmaking, leading to a new genre of entirely computer-animated feature films beginning 25 years ago with Toy Story and continuing to the present day.”
Hanrahan founded Tableau Software in 2003 along with Christian Chabot and Christopher Stolte. The Seattle-based data visualization company, which employs more than 4,000 people worldwide, was sold to Salesforce last year for $15.7 billion.
Catmull and Hanrahan were colleagues at Pixar, where Hanrahan was senior scientist from 1986 to 1989. Catmull was president of Pixar and also Walt Disney Animation Studios.
The Turing Award, named for computer science pioneer Alan Turing, is often described as the “Nobel Prize of computer science.” It comes with a $1 million prize, supported financially by Google.
