Oren Patashnik (born 1954) is a computer scientist. He is notable for co-creating BibTeX, and co-writing Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science. He is a researcher at the Center for Communications Research, La Jolla.
Oren Patashnik graduated from Yale University in 1976.
He later was a student of the famous Donald Knuth at Stanford University.
While working at Bell Labs in 1980, he used 1500 hours of computer time to prove that Qubic (a sort of 3-D tic-tac-toe, developed by Ken Thompson[1]) can always be won by the first player.
In 1985, he co-created BibTeX (a widely used bibliographical format and tool for LaTeX), and has developed it since.
In 1988, he assisted Ronald Graham and Donald Knuth in writing http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~mascagni/cot_5507.html the perennial 1989 college textbook Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science.
In 1990, he got his doctorate in computer science. His thesis paper was about "Optimal Circuit Segmentation for Pseudo-Exhaustive Testing" http://www.castu.tsinghua.edu.cn/yao/students.htm.
He is a researcher at the Center for Communications Research, La Jolla. He is Jewish http://www.shmaltz.com/4040/, and lives in San Diego, California http://www.scrippsranch.org/newsletter/article.asp?Month=January&Year=2004&Section=FireNews with his wife Amy Patashnik http://www.obitcentral.com/obitsearch/obits/nj/nj-mercer4a.htm. He has three children, Joshua, Ariel, and Jeremy.
Oren is a master of puns, particularly those that exploit the pesky dualism between "discreet" and "discrete." He has been known to enjoy a leg of lamb.