John Turner Whitted is an electrical engineer and computer scientist who introduced recursive ray tracing to the computer graphics community with his 1979 paper "An improved illumination model for shaded display".
[1][2] His algorithm proved to be a practical method of simulating global illumination, inspired many variations, and is in wide use today.
[3] Whitted was born in Durham, North Carolina, and grew up in Winston-Salem.
[4] Whitted received his BSE and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Duke University, received his PhD from North Carolina State University in 1978, and joined Bell Labs.
[4] In December 1983, Whitted co-founded computer graphics technology firm Numerical Design Limited (NDL) with Dr. Robert Whitton.