Prof. Dr. Thorsten Jungmann (last updated 2026-10-03)
Edward Westbrook Veitch (1924–2013) was an American computer scientist. He graduated from Harvard University in 1946 with a degree in physics, followed by graduate degrees in physics and applied physics from Harvard in 1948 and 1949.
In his 1952 paper ‘A Chart Method for Simplifying Truth Functions’ Veitch described a graphical procedure for the optimization of logic circuits, which is referred to as the Veitch chart. A year later, in 1953, the method was refined by Karnaugh into what became known as the Karnaugh map or Karnaugh–Veitch map (German: Karnaugh-Veitch-Diagramm). The Veitch chart was itself a rediscovery of Allan Marquand’s logical diagram of 1881.
The Veitch chart orders the rows and columns in the binary sequence of the truth table, whereas the Karnaugh map orders them in Gray code, which interchanges the third and fourth rows and the third and fourth columns; the Karnaugh form became the standard.
Reference and further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_W._Veitch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map