Bob Sproull

Bob Sproull
Bob Sproull in 2008
Born	c. 1945
Alma mater	Harvard University, Stanford University
Thesis	Strategy construction using a synthesis of heuristic and decision-theoretic methods (1977)
Doctoral advisor	Jerome A. Feldman
Doctoral students	Brian Reid Carl Ebeling James Gosling Pradeep Sindhu

Robert Fletcher "Bob" Sproull (born c. 1945) is an American computer scientist, who worked for Oracle Corporation where he was director of Oracle Labs in Burlington, Massachusetts. He is currently an adjunct professor at the College of Information and Computer Sciences, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst [1].

While working towards his B.A. in physics at Harvard College in 1967, Sproull met Ivan Sutherland. Together, they worked on head-mounted displays, which led the way for 3-dimensional virtual reality.

Sproull received his master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1970, and Doctorate in Computer Science from Stanford in 1977.

Sproull worked as a researcher for Xerox Palo Alto Research Center from December 1973 to August 1977. While at Xerox PARC, He worked on the design of the Alto personal computer, the first laser printers, page description languages and the initial PC-type operating systems.

In 1973, Sproull and William M. Newman wrote Principles of Interactive Computer Graphics; a second edition was published in 1979. This was the first comprehensive textbook on computer graphics, and was regarded as the graphics "bible", until it was succeeded by Foley and van Dam's Fundamentals of Computer Graphics.