Algorithms named after people
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Algorithms Named After People — Daily trivia Wednesday, July 1, 2026: questions and answers
All 10 questions with answers and explanations. Play this daily
Q 01The pioneering computer scientist behind Dijkstra's shortest-path algorithm was from which country?
- AGermany
- BNetherlands
- CDenmark
- DBelgium
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Netherlands
Netherlands. Rotterdam-born Edsger Dijkstra solved the shortest-path problem in 1956 for a demonstration of a new computer at Amsterdam's Mathematical Centre.
Q 02Which cryptographer is the R in the RSA encryption algorithm?
- ARon Rivest
- BVincent Rijmen
- CPhillip Rogaway
- DCharles Rackoff
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Ron Rivest
Ron Rivest. With Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman he made RSA public, but GCHQ's Clifford Cocks had devised an equivalent system in 1973 that stayed secret until 1997.
Q 03Robert Boyer co-created a tail-first string-search algorithm with which computer scientist?
- AEdward F. Moore
- BGordon Moore
- CJames Morris
- DJ Strother Moore
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J Strother Moore
J Strother Moore, whose first name really is just the letter J. Their algorithm checks a pattern from its last character, so it can skip ahead through the text.
Q 04Which Greek mathematician's greatest-common-divisor algorithm is one of the oldest known?
- APythagoras
- BArchimedes
- CEuclid
- DThales
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Euclid
Euclid, who set it out in his Elements around 300 BC, though scholars think the Elements largely compiles results from earlier Greek mathematicians.
Q 05Newton's root-finding method also honours which mathematician, who published a simpler version?
- AAbraham de Moivre
- BBrook Taylor
- CColin Maclaurin
- DJoseph Raphson
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Joseph Raphson
Joseph Raphson. His version, like Newton's, worked only on polynomials, and Thomas Simpson later recast it as the calculus-based form taught today.
Q 06Donald Knuth and James Morris share the name of a string-matching algorithm with whom?
- AVaughan Pratt
- BMichael Rabin
- CRichard Karp
- DRobert Tarjan
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Vaughan Pratt
Vaughan Pratt, who published it with Knuth and Morris in 1977, though Morris had conceived it first and Knuth discovered it independently.
Q 07The word 'algorithm' derives from the Latinized name of which Islamic Golden Age mathematician?
- AAl-Biruni
- BAl-Khwarizmi
- COmar Khayyam
- DAl-Ghazali
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Al-Khwarizmi
Al-Khwarizmi. A Latin translation of his arithmetic book rendered his name Algoritmi, and the title of his treatise Al-Jabr gave English the word algebra.
Q 08Richard Bellman's shortest-path algorithm shares its hyphenated name with which other mathematician?
- AStephen Warshall
- BRobert Floyd
- CLester Ford Jr.
- DDelbert Fulkerson
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Lester Ford Jr.
Lester Ford Jr. actually published the method in 1956, two years before Richard Bellman did.
Q 09Which MIT student's term paper produced the compression code now used inside JPEG, MP3 and ZIP files?
- AClaude Shannon
- BDavid Huffman
- CAbraham Lempel
- DRichard Hamming
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David Huffman
David Huffman. Offered a term paper instead of the final exam, he was about to give up when he hit on a frequency-sorted tree that beat his professor Robert Fano's own code.
Q 10Hans Peter Luhn, who patented the credit-card checksum formula, worked at which company?
- ABell Labs
- BXerox
- CIBM
- DRCA
Show answer
IBM
IBM. Luhn's check digit still ends every payment card number, and it catches any single mistyped digit.
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