On this Good Friday, I thought mentioning Knuth would be appropriate. Knuth is arguably one of the largest intellectual contributors to the foundations of electronic prepress. He considered one of the fathers of modern software programming, as the author of the seminal "The Art of Computer Programming." He is also the creator of the typesetting program TeX, still considered by many to be the best application if you want to typeset complex mathematical formulae.

However, my favorite book written by Knuth is examination of Biblical texts called "3:16":

"3:16" came as answer to Knuth on how to select Bible verses for study, making use of a mathematical principle that provides and effective way to gain knowledge about complicated things. The technical term is (using his words) stratified sampling. Essentially, each chapter of the book is an examination of chapter 3, verse 16 of every book in the Bible (with a few necessary exceptions).

And because Knuth is well, Knuth, he managed to get different  typographers such as Friedrich Peter, Hermann Zapf, and  Claude Mediaville to illustrate each chapter with different typographical representation of each verse.

It is simply a stunning book and one of my favorites.

Tagged as: Art of Computer Programming, Bible, Donald Knuth, TeX