"I Learned A Different Definition Of Success": Peter Norvig '78 Remembers Studying CS At Brown
- Posted by Jesse Polhemus
- on Oct. 15, 2015
Brown CS alumni continue to rank highly as industry pioneers. Click here for a list of related stories.
"Back then," Peter Norvig '78, now Director of Research at Google, says of his days at Brown, "nobody owned their own computer, so people would congregate where the computers were and hang out late at night. There was a real sense of camaraderie. The best things were my fellow students and the faculty members. Some of them, like Professor of Computer Science Andy van Dam and Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics Ulf Grenander, are still around. I worked as a teaching assistant, and I learned more from that than from the classes themselves."
Clarissa Clemm has just interviewed Peter for the Brown Daily Herald. In the wide-ranging piece, he looks back on the days in which "nobody owned their own computer", talks about his current work at Google, and even comments on the value of the UTA program. The full article is available here.
The photo above is by Derrick Coetzee and used with permission under Creative Commons license.
