J. N. Patterson Hume

Professor Emeritus, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto Master Emeritus, Massey College

Inductee, C.I.P.A. Hall of Fame, 2002

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Few teachers have had a career to rival that of Patterson Hume. His influence spans the entire Information Age. He taught Canada's first generation of computer students, back when computers were frightening, monstrous things. His textbooks are still important to today's students, to whom the computer is as familiar and fundamental as speech. Hume's career has touched them all.

One of Canada's great communicators in the field of information technology, and a software pioneer of historic importance, J. N. Patterson Hume is the 2002 inductee into the Canadian Information Productivity Awards Hall of Fame.

"If there is one word to describe Pat and his accomplishments, it is 'timeless,' " says Eugene Fiume, chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. "His impact is permanent and undiminished by the years.

"His mark on education in physics and computer science has already been felt by several generations of students. I have no doubt his contributions will be felt for generations to come."

Hume, 79, was born in 1923 to Canadian parents then living in Brooklyn, N.Y. When he was 7, the family returned to Goderich, Ontario, and the young student developed interests in physics and teaching. There were no such things as computers. As a PhD student at the University of Toronto in the 1940s, Hume had to calculate wave functions for complex atoms using hand-cranked calculators. He remembers those long hours as "torture sessions."

Finally, in the early spring of 1952, when Hume was a young professor in the University of Toronto's physics department, a miracle arrived. It came in pieces by freighter up the St. Lawrence Seaway. It was named Ferut, a computer purchased by the university from Ferranti in England, and only the second computer sold commercially in the world (the first was sold by Univac to the U.S. census bureau).

All summer long, into September, technicians struggled to assemble this brute of a machine. It contained thousands of vacuum tubes and took up an entire large room. Among its first users, Hume and his colleagues, including Calvin Gotlieb and Harvey Gellman (both members of the C.I.P.A. Hall of Fame) had to endure constant interruptions because the vacuum tubes kept blowing out. But to Hume the research physicist, "This was the answer to my prayers."

He learned the extremely complex process of programming the computer, and began teaching others how to do it. He saw that things needed fixing.

"We had to have a new operating system," he recalls. "The need was compelling. Somebody had to do it. So we started to write programs, and wrote what amounted to an improved operating system for the Ferut.

"The next step was to design a debugging facility, to correct programs that didn't work at first crack. We didn't even think of our work as a research project but it was, of course. It was original and pioneering."

Of greatest significance, Hume and a colleague, Beatrice Worsley, created in 1953 a programming language called Transcode, which for the first time enabled students to learn in three hours - instead of months -- how to design a computer program. The language had worldwide influence as strong evidence for the need for "automatic programming," and was a precursor of such programming languages as Fortran and Java.

Describing Hume's influence, James Cordy of the Department of Computing and Information Science at Queen's University, says, "As a scientific educator and Canadian computing pioneer, Pat's influence has been felt by several generations of high school and university students in both physics and computing science, and he is certainly one of the most widely known and best respected academic educators in Canada."

Hume was involved in several world-leading events. In 1957, he directed the world's first long-distance use of a computer, made possible by Transcode. Hume worked with Bob Bruce, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, who created a Transcode program to process cancer-research data. He sent the program and data by teletype to Toronto from Regina. Hume's team took the tape, ran down the hall with it and fed it into Ferut, which performed its instructed calculations and produced the results on tape. That went into the teletype machine for transmission back over the telephone wires to Bruce.

"It was fun," Hume says. "We were on the edge."

Hume had personal as well as professional fulfillments. He married in 1953 - the marriage is still going - and he and his wife Patricia began their family of three boys and a girl. Hume developed his techniques as a painter in oils and acrylics, and in 1965 joined the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. He is still a member. The club presented a one-person show of Hume's work in the spring of 2002. Until the late 1990s, Hume was also active as a writer, actor, director and composer of songs for the club's annual spring revue.

Hume's techniques as a performer were honed in the classroom. Colleagues remember him as a model teacher.

"His emphasis on good teaching - imaginative, committed and exploiting all the good things that can be done with new technologies - is a major contributor to higher education," says Peter Russell of the University of Toronto's Department of Political Science. "He has also been a great exemplar of the tradition of scientific humanism, maintaining a lively and intelligent interest in the arts and in the social and political issues of the day."

In 1956-57, Hume and Gotlieb taught a night course as part of a continuing education program for businesspeople interested in learning about computers. Publishing company McGraw-Hill worked with them to turn the lectures into a textbook. The result in 1958 was the publication of High-Speed Data Processing, the world's first book on the subject of computer applications in business.

Hume's place in the history of Canadian information technology extends beyond the classroom and the boardroom. One day in 1958, a member of the University of Toronto's television committee walked into the office that Hume shared with fellow physics professor Donald Ivey, and asked if they would produce a series of science shows in collaboration with the CBC. They agreed instantly, and wrote and performed in 13 shows on various scientific topics.

"How we learned how to do it, I don't know," Hume chuckles. "In our last program, we cut loose a little bit, and lumped some experiments together to have some fun. That show became an underground hit.

"They asked us to do a summer series, which was broadcast coast to coast in 1959. We had an audience of a million and three-quarters people. We got a lot of fan mail, which was very heartening. People said, 'We don't understand everything you have said, but for heaven's sake don't stop!' "

That series evolved in 1960 into The Nature of Things, for which Hume and Ivey performed as hosts every four weeks for six years. The program continues today with David Suzuki. Recently, Hume was awarded the Sandford Fleming Medal by the Royal Canadian Institute for his pioneering work in early television with the CBC, informing the public about science and physics.

Hume and Ivey wrote physics textbooks in the early 1960s. After that, Hume became a full-time computer scientist. He has written or co-written 19 books, many since his retirement from the university in 1988. His textbooks on computer programming are widely used in Ontario high schools.

"Many students in Canadian schools and universities have been introduced to computing through books that Pat has written and projects of which he has been part, and by teachers who have benefited from Pat's shaping of their approaches to computing and to pedagogy." says David Barnard, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Regina.

Hume was a founder of the University of Toronto's Department of Computer Science in 1964, and chair of the department from 1975 to 1980. He was associate dean for physical sciences in the University of Toronto Graduate School, 1968-72. He is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was master of Massey College from 1981 through 1988 and now holds the title of master emeritus. He is professor emeritus within the Department of Computer Science.

In announcing Hume's induction into the C.I.P.A. Hall of Fame, John Tory, chair of the C.I.P.A. Hall of Fame Selection Panel and president and CEO of Rogers Cable Inc., said: "Professor Hume deserves to be known as one of Canada's masters of the science of information. His influence as a teacher is immeasurable, and he changed history by helping to transform computers into tools that everyone can use."