Donald Knuth is so revered among computer scientists that they won't cash his checks. Knuth offers a standard reward of $2.56 (one "hexadecimal dollar") to the first finder of each error in his published books. Since 1981 he has written more than $20,000 in checks, but most of the recipients have simply framed them as points of pride. "There's one man who lives near Frankfurt who would probably have more than $1,000 if he cashed all the checks I've sent him," Knuth said in an October 2001 lecture. "Even if everybody cashed their checks, it would stil be more than worth it to me to know that my books are getting better." - Cee Bee

Wondered exactly the same thing, Matthew. Probably no longer an active account since it's a 10 year old check. - FFing Enigma

Good Lord I hope it's not an active account. Stanford U. could be out a lot of money if some Nigerian prince stumbles on this. - Craig Eddy

What kind of brush/pen was he using? - Hiro Asari

That looks like a well used Flair felt tip pen to me - FFing Enigma

Knuth had to close this checking account years ago, for exactly that reason. He now writes "personal certificates of deposit to each awardee's account at the Bank of San Serriffe, which is an offshore institution that has branches in Blefuscu and Elbonia on the planet Pincus." I.e. not real checks - as it turns out, only about 3% of the checks he wrote were ever cashed. People kept them as souvenirs. See his update at http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth... for more details. - DGentry

thanks for the scoop! - Cee Bee

Thanks, Tina. - Hiro Asari

This was in Mental Floss recently :-) - David Knight