Carl R. de Boor - Personal

Personal

Carl is a lover of music—especially classical, and more especially Johann Sebastian Bach -- walks, good food, and games of all sorts. In 1981, he bought his first personal computer, an Apple II with 32KB of memory with an old reel-to-reel tape recorder hooked up to store programs. He required his children to write any computer games they wished to play. With them he wrote an accounting program for tracking his checkbook, which he kept using long after the kids went to college, though he had to edit the program to use the Z key for recording a new transaction when the R key finally wore out, as well as implementations of a number of his children's favorite board games.

He is a lover of the quirky and easily enthralled by art. He used to keep a print of The Garden of Earthly Delights in his dining room, to the distress of some of his children, and others.

Carl learned to play the cornet, as a child, to combat asthma. He was also fed a vast quantity of raw eggs, whipped with a sprinkle of sugar, supposedly to help strengthen him during his early, sickly years. As a father, he made his children eat such egg treats.

During his Madison years, he played the bass drum in the neighborhood 4 July Parade, and each August celebrates his arrival in America, where he is a citizen.