Prof. Robert Johnson

"Ron began his geometric computer art in graduate school at the University of Iowa with the aid and development of his own personal three-dimensional modeling package that he created called INGSYS which was embedded in FORTRAN.   He continued to develop his geometrical forms and the software functions of INGSYS to model his designs at the University of Illinois Urbana campus.  There in 1967 with a joint appointment in Computer Science and Architecture he used INGSYS as a three dimensional modeling language to teach the first ever Computer-Aided Design and Computer Graphics course to Architects.

Ron turned down an offer from Larry Roberts Director, ARPA-IPTO to accept a ½ million dollar research contract to develop the computer graphics for Illiac-IV which I was overseeing at Burroughs.  Instead thinking he would be more focused on his own work, he in 1969 decided to join the faculty of University of Utah under David Evans, and became a part of the now historic ARPA funded computer graphics research project at Utah.  There Ron’s work came to full bloom.  I saw Ron’s original computer art forms and images at his 1972 exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and was so impressed that I invited my friend and colleague, Stan Ovshinsky, of Energy Conversion Devices in Detroit, to come to Salt Lake City to see Ron’s exhibition. 

Over the next several decades Ron’s work contributed to both art and science.  His major permanent art work is the Ukrainian Easter Egg in Alberta, Canada near Edmonton.  This giant egg monument still stands and rotates in the wind, exactly as Ron envisioned and constructed it in 1975.  Amazing.  Impressive.  The only monumental sculpture comparable to Ron’s Egg came 3 decades later (2004) with Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate dubbed "The Bean" in Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois.

Ron’s scientific contributions include architectural geometric structures (conceptually similar to what he used in his egg) along with the software and hardware to construct them, software to implement dramatic and powerful video graphics, and geometries in many dimensions.  Characterizations of practical and theoretical geometries achieved through Ron’s expertise at folding paper models are intriguing, powerful, and useful. Over the decades while I was VP-Engineering for Burroughs, President and founder of Mosaic Systems, Exec.VP of Energy Conversion Devices, President and Founder of Optical Imaging Systems, and Professor of Computer Science at Univ. of Utah, Ron has impressed, intrigued, and helped me with his ideas and suggestions throughout these incarnations.  Ron contributed important background for the ideas and techniques which I have developed in recent years for analysing, visualizing, and understanding multi-dimensional data:  N-DV Website  His own ideas in data mining and data visualization are significant contributions.

The mathematical significance of Ron’s contributions is illuminated by his repeated invitations to present his ideas at periodic gatherings (of G4G-X) honoring Martin Gardner, and the follow up invitations for Ron to present his folded structures, geometrical forms and inventions to mathematical conventions worldwide.

Ron has been and is a good colleague and friend. "

RR Johnson

Salt Lake City, UT

December 5, 2008