Yesterday – April 21, 2011, Max Mathews passed away. He was a computer music pioneer who is famous for writing the first computer-sound generating program called MUSIC in 1957. So many amazing technological breakthroughs in computer music, not to mention great art, have been discovered because of his work at Bell Labs. (The “Max”, in Max/MSP/Jitter is named after him) He will be greatly missed. Here are some links to find out more about him:

A good bio

The Cycling ’74 forum on Max’s passing

The Wikipedia page