Norton Starr

Norton Starr was born in 1936 in Kansas City, Missouri. He studied mathematics at Harvard College, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1958, and completed his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964. After serving as an instructor at MIT, he joined the faculty of Amherst College in 1966, where he taught mathematics and computer science for more than four decades. He was named the Brian E. Boyle ’69 Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science and was widely recognized for his teaching, receiving the Goodwin Medal for Conspicuously Effective Teaching. 

Starr’s engagement with computer graphics began during a sabbatical at the University of Waterloo in 1972–73, when he gained access to early computing facilities and began using computers to generate visual representations of mathematical structures. Working primarily with IBM System/360 computers and Calcomp drum plotters, he produced drawings that explored graph theory, harmonic variation, and functions of multiple variables. These works were generated through custom programs and rendered using computer-controlled fountain and ball-point pens, often later adapted into lithographic prints. Starr viewed this work as an extension of his mathematical practice rather than as a separate artistic career.

Starr’s computer-generated drawings were exhibited internationally and reproduced widely in mathematics and computer-science journals and books. His work appeared in early computer-art exhibitions across North America, Europe, and Asia, including the 1989 exhibition Computer Art in ČSSR and in the World in Prague. Several of his works, including Tecumseh, are held in the Herbert W. Franke Collection at the Kunsthalle Bremen, where they form part of the historical record of early computer art. Starr passed away in 2025.