Tributes

(a subtopic of History)

Note: · identifies a AAAI Fellow

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

· Saul Amarel, 74, an Innovator in Artificial Intelligence, Is Dead. By Eric Nagourney. The New York Times (December 22, 2002). "Dr. Saul Amarel, who helped develop the field of artificial intelligence and founded the computer science department at Rutgers University, died on Wednesday in Princeton, N.J., where he lived. ... Among his peers, Dr. Amarel was perhaps best known for a paper he wrote in 1968, which put him at the vanguard of the artificial intelligence movement. Decades later, the importance of the paper may be hard to understand. It concerned the way one might program a computer to solve a brain-teaser well known to mathematicians that involves three cannibals, three missionaries and a boat that seats only two. The challenge for the missionaries is to transport the cannibals across a river without ever letting any of their party be outnumbered -- and eaten. Solving the problem was not really the point. That had already been done. What Dr. Amarel set out to do was to create an approach that did not rely on a mechanical crunching of numbers, but instead used an algorithm that allowed the computer to figure out a solution in a manner more akin to human reasoning. ... Saul Amarel was born in Salonika, Greece, and moved with his family to what became Israel ... fought in Israel's war of independence, then went to Columbia University,"

• In Memoriam: Saul Amarel. By Tom Mitchell and Casimir A. Kulikowski. AI Magazine 24(1): Spring 2003, 6-12.
• Oral history interview by Arthur L. Norberg, 5 October 1989, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. "Amarel begins the interview with a discussion of his interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and his early research in the field while at Radio Corporation of America. He provides a brief overview AI research at Carnegie-Mellon University and Stanford University in the 1960s and his establishment of the computer science program at Rutgers University in the early 1970s. Amarel also discusses the relationship of AI to computer science. The bulk of the interview concerns the Information Processing Techniques Office's (IPTO) support of research in computer science and artificial intelligence. The primary topics of this discussion are IPTO and Amarel's recruitment as director in 1985, the importance of strategic computing, the creation of the Information Science and Technology Office (ISTO) and the budgeting process for ISTO. Amarel concludes with his thoughts on current directions in AI research."

Frank Anger: In Memoriam. AI Magazine 25(3): Fall 2004, 9. "Frank Anger died in a tragic automobile accident on July 7, 2004. He was Deputy Director of the Division of Computing and Communications Foundations in the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). ... Together with his wife and long-term research collaborator Rita Rodriguez, he was the principal organizer of a series of workshops on spatial and temporal reasoning held at the world’s major artificial intelligence conferences each year since 1993.

B

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies. By Steve Lohr. The New York Times (March 20, 2007). "John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. ... Fortran, released in 1957, was 'the turning point' in computer software, much as the microprocessor was a giant step forward in hardware, according to J.A.N. Lee, a leading computer historian. Fortran changed the terms of communication between humans and computers, moving up a level to a language that was more comprehensible by humans. So Fortran, in computing vernacular, is considered the first successful higher-level language. ... Back then, there was no field of computer science, no courses or schools. The first written reference to 'software' as a computer term, as something distinct from hardware, did not come until 1958."

• Also see:
  • John Backus (1924-2007): Father of Fortran. IEEE Spectrum Online (March 20, 2007).
  • John Backus, 82; Created Programming Language. By Brian Bergstein. The Associated Press / available from washingtonpost.com (March 21, 2007).
  • John Backus Computer scientist and creator of the revolutionary Fortran. By David Harper. The Guardian (April 5, 2007).

· Woody Bledsoe: His Life and Legacy. By Michael Ballantyne, Robert S. Boyer, and Larry Hines. AI Magazine 17(1): Spring 1996, 7-20. "Woodrow Wilson (Woody) Bledsoe died on 4 October 1995 of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Woody was one of the founders of AI, making early contributions in pattern recognition and automated reasoning. He continued to make significant contributions to AI throughout his long career. His legacy consists not only of his scientific work but also of several generations of scientists who learned from Woody the joy of scientific research and the way to go about it. Woody's enthusiasm, his perpetual sense of optimism, his can-do attitude, and his deep sense of duty to humanity offered those who knew him the hope and comfort that truly good and great men do exist."

• His AAAI Presidential Address (1985).

Anita Borg, Trailblazer for Women in Computer Field, Dies at 54. By Katie Hafner. The New York Times (April 10, 2003). "Although highly respected as a computer scientist, Dr. Borg made her biggest mark as a champion and mentor of women in what has traditionally been a man's field. Through the several programs she founded, she became virtually synonymous with involving women in the emerging science. In 1987, after returning from a technical conference where she was one of only a handful of women present, Dr. Borg started Systers, an electronic mailing list on technical subjects exclusively for women who are engineers. ... The Systers list has since grown to include more than 2,500 women in 38 countries. ... In 1994, Dr. Borg was co-founder of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women, a conference held every two years focusing on the research and career interests of women in computing."

• Also see: Computer scientist Anita Borg dies. By Alorie Gilbert. CNET News (April 8, 2003).

C

Max Clowes. Experiencing Computation: A tribute to Max Clowes (Originally appeared in Computing in Schools 1981) By Aaron Sloman. Abstract: "Max Clowes (pronounced as if spelt Clues, or Klews) was one of the pioneers of AI vision research in the UK. He inspired and helped to develop Artificial Intelligence and computational Cognitive Science at he University of Sussex. In 1981 he tragically died, shortly after leaving the University in order to work on computing in Schools. This paper was originally published in 1981. The version here has had some footnotes referring to subsequent developments." (Also available in other formats.)

D

Michael L. Dertouzos, 64, Computer Visionary, Dies. By John Schwartz. The New York Times (August 30, 2001). "Though he worked in some of the highest realms of computer science, Mr. Dertouzos always insisted that technology be designed to serve people and not the other way around. In 1999, for example, the labs announced the 'Oxygen Project,' a $50 million effort undertaken with the M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to make computers easier to use, the institute said, and 'as natural a part of our environment as the air we breathe.'"

• Commentary - Farewell to a Visionary of the Computer Age. Business Week Online (September 17, 2001).
• Remembering Technology's Humanist. MIT Technology Review (September 6, 2001).

Edsger Dijkstra 72, Physicist Who Shaped Computer Era, Dies. By John Markoff. The New York Times (August 10, 2002). "Dr. Dijkstra is best known for his shortest-path algorithm, a method for finding the most direct route on a graph or map, and for his work as the co-designer of the first version of Algol 60, a programming language that represented one of the first compiler programs that translates human instructions. ... Of even greater importance was his solution to what he originally called the dining quintuple problem, but which later became known as the dining philosophers' problem. ... Dr. Dijkstra, an advocate of an approach known as structured programming, wrote a short research note in the March 1968 edition of the journal Communications of the ACM that became legendary. Titled 'The GO TO Considered Harmful,' it argued against the complexity of a feature in programming languages like Fortran and Basic that permitted programmers to write convoluted programs that jump around haphazardly."

• "Dijkstra and his wife also enjoyed exploring U.S. state and national parks in their Volkswagen camper van, called the Touring Machine. Dijkstra was the 1972 recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery's Turing Award, often viewed as the Nobel Prize for computing." - Computer science pioneer Dijkstra dies. By Rupert Goodwins. CNET (August 8, 2002).
• Here are some of the quotations that are attibuted to him:
  • "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
  • "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence."
  • Also see his entry in our collection of Quotations.

E

· Robert Engelmore: In Memoriam. By Bruce G. Buchanan, Thomas C. Rindfleisch, and Edward A Feigenbaum. AI Magazine 24(2): Summer 2003, 15-20. "Robert S. (Bob) Engelmore, who retired in 1998 from the Knowledge Systems Laboratory at Stanford University, died in an ocean accident in Hawaii on March 25, 2003. As the second editor of AI Magazine, he guided its development from 1981 to 1991; he was also elected a fellow of AAAI in 1992. He had been involved in many aspects of AI and was respected for his uncommon common sense and good humor."

• April 27 memorial set for computer scientist Bob Engelmore. By Dawn Levy. Stanford Report (April 22, 2003). "Engelmore, 68, had been swimming in a rock-rimmed shoreline pool with his 5-year-old grandson, Jack, when they and other swimmers were overwhelmed by giant waves. Engelmore helped lift the child to safety but was pulled out to sea by currents. By the time lifeguards reached him, his heart had stopped beating. ... Engelmore came to Stanford in 1970 as a research associate in the Computer Science Department. He worked on the first expert system, DENDRAL, which had applications in physical chemistry. ... 'In the field of artificial intelligence, he was the widely respected editor who guided the early growth of AI Magazine, the main publication of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence,' [Ed] Feigenbaum explained. 'His most influential publication was the anthology Blackboard Systems that he co-edited with A. Morgan.'"

F

Lawrence Fogel, 78; artificial intelligence theorist. By Michael Kinsman. The San Diego Union-Tribune (February 23, 2007). "Mr. Fogel, who had a background in electrical engineering, challenged conventional thinking about artificial intelligence in 1960s. At that time, the standard way to generate artificial intelligence was to program a computer to mimic what the brain was doing. Mr. Fogel theorized that you could replicate human evolution in the computer and allow it to develop artificial intelligence. ... Mr. Fogel's 1964 doctoral dissertation became the basis for the first book in the field of evolutionary computing, 'Artificial Intelligence Through Simulated Evolution,' which was co-authored with Alvin Owens and Michael Walsh."

• Also see: Dr. Lawrence J. Fogel, Inventor of Evolutionary Programming, Dies at 78. PRNewswire (February 26, 2007). "Dr. Fogel has been described as 'a father of computational intelligence.' Beginning in 1960, he devised evolutionary programming, a radical approach in artificial intelligence that simulated evolution on computers to literally evolve solutions to problems. While a senior staff scientist at General Dynamics/Astronautics in San Diego, he conducted a research study in evolutionary programming to advise management on the technical aspects of man-machine relations within aerospace systems. ... In 1993, Dr. Fogel founded Natural Selection, Inc. in La Jolla, California, which combines evolutionary computation with neural networks, fuzzy systems and other computational intelligence technologies."

G

John G. Gaschnig: In Memoriam. By Nils J. Nilsson. AI Magazine 3(2): Spring 1982, 2. "John Gaschnig was best known lately for his work on expert systems, notably the PROSPECTOR geological exploration system developed at SRI Internation."

H

I J K

Jonathan J. King: In Memorium. By Bruce Buchanan. AI Magazine 12(2): Summer 1991, 6. "Jonathan was torn between C.P. Snow's two cultures of science and the humanities. ... He never abandoned his social conscience, but he was looking for ways to reconcile that with his responsibilities in the technical world."

Alan Kotok; he tred vanguard of computers with brilliance, wit. By Bryan Marquard. The Boston Globe & boston.com (June 6, 2006). "For someone who devised a computer chess program as an MIT undergraduate in the late 1950s, helped create the world's first video game, and held a leadership role with the World Wide Web Consortium, Alan Kotok got his start in an inauspicious fashion -- or so he was told. 'There's a family legend, which I don't personally recall,' he said in a 2004 oral history, 'that my engineering career began at a tender age when I stuck a screwdriver into an electric outlet.... Arriving at MIT in 1958, Mr. Kotok joined the Tech Model Railroad Club, where he met like-minded students interested in computers. In the spring, artificial intelligence pioneer John McCarthy , then a professor at MIT, taught a computer programming class for freshman. McCarthy told four students that he had been working on a computer chess program, Mr. Kotok recalled, and asked whether they would take over. Mr. Kotok ended up writing a thesis for his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering on the program. ... As an undergraduate, Mr. Kotok began working with several students who collectively developed Spacewar, the first video game, and the first joystick. After graduating, Mr. Kotok went to work for Digital."

• Alan Kotok, 64, created joystick. By Sarah H. Wright. MIT News Office (June 13, 2006). "In the same interview, Kotok described his 1956 encounter with a 'giant thinking machine' on a school field trip to the Mobil Research Lab in New Jersey as the 'spark that triggered me. We went through a programming exercise, punched up the cards, put them into the machine and the printer clank-clanked and we got the answers. I said, "Computers! This is it!"'"

· Henry E. Kyburg, Professor of Philosophy and Computer, Science Dies. University of Rochester press release (November 7, 2007). "Henry E. Kyburg Jr., a renowned and respected professor of philosophy and computer science at the University of Rochester, died of acute pancreatitis Oct. 30 at the age of 79 at Strong Memorial Hospital. He was well-known for his cutting-edge studies of uncertain inference, which is the human process of reaching conclusions, and data mining, the process by which computers search for information in data or draw conclusions from it."

L

Joshua Lederberg, 82, a Nobel Winner, Dies. By William J. Broad. The New York Times / also available from the International Herald Tribune: Joshua Lederberg, 82, pioneer in bacteria science (February 5, 2008). "In 1959, he joined the Stanford School of Medicine, where he was chairman of the department of genetics and was a professor of biology and computer science, working on research in artificial intelligence, biochemistry and medicine. ... From 1966 to 1971, Dr. Lederberg wrote a weekly column for The Washington Post, commenting on science education, scientists’ role in society and divisive topics like population control, intelligence testing and regulating recombinant DNA technology. In a 1968 column, he accused policy makers of 'blindness to the pace of biological advance and its accessibility to the most perilous genocidal experimentation.' In 1972, at Washington’s urging, most nations renounced germ warfare as immoral and repugnant. Something of a wordsmith, Dr. Lederberg coined the term exobiology, or the study of the possibility of alien life. He collaborated with the astronomer Carl Sagan in establishing exobiology as a scientific discipline and in educating the public on the biological implications of space exploration."

• Joshua Lederberg - Obituary. The Guardian (February 11, 2008). "The American scientist Joshua Lederberg, who has died aged 82, won the 1958 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for showing that bacteria can conjugate and exchange small strips of genetic material. ... From the 1960s Lederberg explored the role of computers in scientific research and helped develop an innovative programme that generated hypotheses about the chemical composition of unknown compounds. He brought science to public policy-making, particularly security and arms control, as a member of the Pentagon's defence science board. He wrote a weekly column on science and society for the Washington Post from 1966 to 1971. He warned against the threat of bio-terrorism. In 1978 he returned to New York as president of Rockefeller University, and reinvigorated it, refocusing its molecular biology research laboratories towards cancer and infectious, neurological and heart disease. He resumed his own research into DNA and computer modelling of scientific reasoning, and continued advising governments. He retired as president of Rockefeller in 1990, but was made professor emeritus, and worked there to the end of his life."
• Joshua Lederberg. The Times (February 6, 2008). "The geneticist and microbiologist Joshua Lederberg was without doubt one of the leading scientists of the twentieth century. He was a pioneer of modern microbiology and immunology, one of the founders of molecular biology, and a leader in the development of biotechnology. ... Lederberg was a very competent applied mathematician and, with a colleague, created some of the first computers. Lederberg was one of the first to realise the potential of computers and artificial intelligence to further biomedical research and molecular biology. He established a new field of scientific research -- the acquisition, systematisation, and dissemination of biomedical knowledge using computers. ... Lederberg was an effective communicator of science, keen on furthering the public understanding of science."
• Joshua Lederberg; Pioneer of Molecular Biology. By Patricia Sullivan. The Washington Post (February 5, 2008). "Interdisciplinary in his methods and interests, Dr. Lederberg helped introduce computers and artificial intelligence into laboratory research and biomedical communication."
• Tribute to Joshua Lederberg - via the AAAI Video Archive
• The Joshua Lederberg Papers (@ Interviews & Oral Histories)

Christopher Longuet-Higgins - Cognitive scientist with a flair for chemistry. Obituary by Chris Darwin.The Guardian (June 10, 2004). "Christopher Longuet-Higgins, who has died [March 27, 2004] aged 80, was not only a brilliant scientist in two distinct areas - theoretical chemistry and cognitive science - but also a gifted amateur musician, keen to advance the scientific understanding of the art. ... In 1967, as a result of a growing interest in the brain and the new field of artificial intelligence, Christopher made a dramatic change in direction and moved to Edinburgh to co-found the department of machine intelligence and perception, together with Richard Gregory and Donald Michie. It was Christopher who, in 1973, was the first to name this field more broadly as 'cognitive science'. ... As time went on, tensions arose between the founding members of the department at Edinburgh - partly a reflection of intellectual differences regarding the future direction of artificial intelligence - which resulted in a contentious review of the field by Christopher's old Wykehamist colleague Sir James Lighthill. At the instigation of Stuart Sutherland, Christopher made the decision to move to the experimental psychology department at Sussex University. There, he continued his work in cognitive science and made major contributions in vision, language production and music perception."

M

David Marr (a short biography), by S. Edelman and L. M. Vaina, International Encyclopaedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Pergamon, 2001 (to appear).

· Ryszard Michalski; Shaped How Machines Learn. By Matt Schudel. The Washington Post (October 1, 2007; page B06). "Ryszard S. Michalski, a George Mason University professor whose research helped shape the field of machine learning, bringing computers closer to the realm of human thought, died Sept. 20 of cancer at his home in Fairfax County. He was 70. While working in his native Poland in the 1960s, Dr. Michalski devised an early computer system that could recognize handwriting. After coming to the United States in 1970, he expanded the field of machine learning, creating applications in which computers could execute a form of reasoning, drawing conclusions from information supplied to them. ... Dr. Michalski's specialty of machine learning is similar to but distinct from artificial intelligence. The underlying purpose of much of his work was to use computers to recognize patterns that could ease the decision-making process in seemingly unrelated systems. His research has been applied to agriculture, medicine, the stock market, fraud protection and voice recognition systems, among other things. ... For many years, Dr. Michalski directed GMU's Machine Learning and Inference Laboratory. He was a co-author of a multivolume textbook, "Machine Learning: An Artificial Intelligence Approach," and was a co-author or editor of more than 15 other books. He wrote more than 500 technical papers. He was a co-founder of Machine Learning journal and lectured around the world. ... Several months ago, Dr. Michalski became the founding director of George Mason's Center for Discovery Science and Health Informatics. The purpose of the center is to apply the theories of machine learning to medicine. Ultimately, it was hoped that a computer could use data about a patient to make a medical diagnosis."

• University Mourns Death of Prof. Michalski. The Mason Gazette (September 26, 2007). "Ryszard Michalski, PRC Professor of Computational Sciences and Health Informatics , died from cancer on Sept. 20, Provost Peter Stearns announced Tuesday. He joined the Mason faculty in 1988. ... Michalski was a pioneer and cofounder of the field of machine learning. To recognize his efforts to foster collaboration between Polish and American scientists, the president of Poland honored him with the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in July. ... He cofounded the Journal of Machine Learning and helped organize the first international machine learning conferences."

· Donald Michie - Key wartime code-breaker who became a leader in the field of artificial intelligence. By Stephen Muggleton. The Guardian (July 10, 2007). "Professor Donald Michie and his former wife Dame Anne McLaren, distinguished scientists in separate fields that overlapped at one point, have died together in a car accident; Donald was 83. He made contributions of crucial international significance in three distinct fields of endeavour. During the second world war, he developed code-breaking techniques which led to effective automatic deciphering of German high-level ciphers. In the 1950s, he worked with Anne [McLaren] on pioneering techniques which were fundamental in the development of in vitro fertilisation. Donald subsequently became one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, an area to which he devoted the remainder of his academic career. It was within this field that I came to know Donald as an inspirational supervisor of my PhD at Edinburgh - not only insightful, forceful and even heroic, but possessing a wicked sense of humour. ... Owing to recent declassification, it is now clear how profoundly important Donald's wartime research was. ... During this period at Bletchley, Donald held frequent lunchtime discussions with Alan Turing on the possibility of building computer programs that would display intelligence. ... Both Donald and Turing were interested in programming computers to play chess, as well as developing programs which could learn automatically from experience. ... [H]e developed a noughts-and-crosses playing machine called Menace, for which he developed a general-purpose learning algorithm called Boxes. Since no computers were then available to him, he hand-simulated the Boxes algorithm, using a device made from an assembly of matchboxes. By 1963, Donald had assembled a small artificial-intelligence research group at Hope Park Square in Edinburgh. With the support of the Edinburgh vice-chancellor, Sir Edward Appleton, Donald established the experimental programming unit in 1965. ... His crowning achievement was the development, under a team he led, of Freddy II, the world's first demonstration of a laboratory robot capable of using computer vision feedback in assembling complex objects from a heap of parts. ... In 1986, as head of the Turing Trust in Cambridge, Donald founded the Turing Institute in Glasgow, in honour of his former colleague's key contributions to the field."

• Professor Donald Michie (obituary) - UK founder of machine intelligence. By Martin Campbell-Kelly. The Independent (July 12, 2007). "In the 1960s, Donald Michie founded the field of machine intelligence in Britain through a unique combination of personal history, political savvy and academic brilliance. He had become attracted to the field of machine intelligence during the Second World War, when he had come to know Alan Turing - the most influential computer scientist of his generation. Although there had been a 'cybernetics' movement with an interest in intelligent mechanisms since the late 1930s, it languished after the war and Michie was unable to find a place within it. He therefore set out on an academic career in genetics. Michie had been convinced by Turing that the key to machine intelligence would be the availability of powerful digital computers. These started to arrive in British universities in the early 1960s and Michie adroitly switched disciplines, eventually establishing the Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception at Edinburgh University."
• Professor Donald Michie (obituary) - Geneticist who after wartime codebreaking at Bletchley Park was a pioneering researcher into artificial intelligence. The Times (July 12, 2007). "While the wider ambitions of artificial intelligence research may not have been realised, the impact of work done from the 1960s onwards in machine learning, rule-based systems and computer reasoning has given us the easy-to-operate computers that we now use. Predictive text on mobile phones, realistic characters in video games and efficient call-centre systems all rely on the fundamental research done by Professor Donald Michie and his colleagues during his long and distinguished career at Edinburgh and Strathclyde universities. ... Michie’s primary research involved finding ways for machines to extract rules and behaviours from example data, so that they could learn from experience, and he developed the technique of 'standard induction'. This was effectively applied in industrial plants, for example at a uranium reprocessing plant in Pennsylvania. Aware of the broader applications of his research, Michie developed a commercial version, ExpertEase, to make the process of extracting general rules from human experts more efficient."
• Professor Donald Michie (obituary). Telegraph.co.uk (July 9, 2007; also appears in The Daily Telegraph; page 23). "Professor Donald Michie, who died in a motor accident on Saturday aged 83, was a pioneer in the creation of artificial intelligence; during the war he worked on breaking German codes at Bletchley Park and later, as Professor of Machine Intelligence at Edinburgh University, helped to bring about the world of robots, computer games and search engines. Known to his colleagues as 'Duckmouse', Donald Michie was one of the great multi-disciplinarians of his generation. A classical scholar at the start, he worked with mathematicians - and especially Alan Turing - at Bletchley, then went into genetics until computers caught up with his ambitions to 'build a brain' before putting together his team at Edinburgh. ... [A]t Edinburgh Michie produced innovations including MENACE (an early games machine) and FREDERICK, a prototype robot for industrial applications. Retiring in 1984 with the title of Professor Emeritus, he founded the Turing Institute at Glasgow University. ... He was awarded numerous honorary degrees and was a Fellow of the British Computer Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence."
• Donald Michie, 83, Theorist of Artificial Intelligence, Dies. By Jeremy Pearce. The New York Times (July 23, 2007). "In the early 1970s, in work that received international attention and helped make Britain a force in advancing artificial intelligence, Dr. Michie led a team that produced 'Freddy,' a computer-directed robotic arm that could choose and assemble parts from a jumbled and potentially confusing array. To demonstrate Freddy’s capabilities, Dr. Michie programmed the machine to put together the parts of a toy truck. ... In the 1970s, Dr. Michie, who trained as a geneticist, turned his hand to writing computer programs to solve complex problems in industry and science. His research has been used to improve flight simulators for pilot training and to increase the efficiency of a uranium refining plant. In 1979, he explained his ideas in 'Expert Systems in the Microelectronic Age,' a book that Dr. Selman said brought “a level of scientific quality to the field that remains unmatched.”
• Watch this 2002 interview with Professor Donald Michie and this 1973 debate.
• Visit his home page.

Robert William Milne dies on Everest. EverestNews.com (June 5, 2005). "As per the report of Liaison Officer and the concerned trekking agency, the following one member ... died at the altitude of 8450 m. on the way to the summit of Mt. Everest on 5th June 2005. 1. Mr. Robert William Milne (49 yrs.), Software Engineer, Livingston, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. ... EverestNews.com spoke with Rob several time before he left for Everest. ... Rob was very interested in new technology that might save climbers lives."

• AAAI Member News. By Carol Hamilton. AI Magazine 26(3): Fall 2005, 7. "AAAI notes with deep regret the death on June 5, 2005 of Rob Milne, longtime member of AAAI and AI Magazine editorial board member. Milne died while climbing Mount Everest. ... Milne earned international respect for his innovative work in adapting AI as a practical aid to industry and in bridging the gap between the research laboratory and the factory floor. He was considered a leader in the effort to promote artificial intelligent applications. Even during his ascent on Mount Everest, he was testing a communications system called IMPACs...."
• In Memorium - Robert Milne (1956-2005). By Sara Reese Hedberg. IEEE Intelligent Systems, (September/October 2005; 20(3): 10-11).
• Everest resting place for climber. BBC News (June 6, 2005). "Mrs Milne said her US-born husband had died while fulfilling his lifetime dream. She said: ...'Robert died at the top, doing what he loved. That brings me some comfort.'... Professor Austin Tate told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme that Dr Milne had a distinguished career as a scientist, working for a period as the Pentagon's chief scientist on artificial intelligence (AI). He said: 'Rob was very well known in all of the communities he played a part in. I'm part of the academic and scientific work he did on artificial intelligence but he was involved in so many other activities in Scotland - in business, the information technology sector, the mountaineering sector. He really was one of the strongest people engaged in AI applications throughout Europe. He'd formed a very successful business and had been doing this work for several years.'"
• Robert Milne (July 13, 1956 - June 5, 2005): Mountain-climbing entrepreneur who set new limits in artificial intelligence and summit-bagging. Times Online (July 5, 2005).
• Milne, 49, died scaling Everest. By Clayton Woullard, Rocky Mountain News (July 5, 2005). "'He liked to solve problems, so artificial intelligence gave him the tools to solve problems that people hadn't really thought about,' [his sister] Diana Milne said."

Pragnesh Jay Modi. In AAAI News. By Carol Hamilton. AI Magazine 28(2): Summer 2007, 6.

• Also see: AI's 10 to Watch. By David L. Waltz. IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(3): May/Jun, 2006, 5-14. "The recipients of the IEEE Intelligent Systems 10 to Watch award-- ... Pragnesh Jay Modi ... --discuss their current research and their visions of AI for the future. This article is part of a special issue on the Future of AI."

Katherine "Kate" Murphy, 1987–2005. "Long-time participants in AAAI and IJCAI (International Joint Conference on AI) robotics competitions will surely remember Kate Murphy. Kate would accompany her mother, Robin, and help her demonstrate rescue robots in those events' early days. Declared the unofficial mascot of many teams, Kate also had an onstage role as the 'rescue victim' in many of her mom's demos, something she wrote about in a short book chapter she published, at age 12, and which we reproduce here with the kind permission of Academic Press.... Kate passed away on 23 January 2005 from complications of a kidney defect...." - from James Hendler's In Memoriam which accompanies Kate's book chapter: Trapped with Robots. IEEE Intelligent Systems (May/June 2005; 20(3): 10-11).

Rangaswamy Narasimhan: Narasimhan, doyen of Indian computer science, dead. By Dr. S. Ramani. The Hindu (September 4, 2007). "Dr. Rangaswamy Narasimhan, the designer of India’s first general purpose digital computer, died in Bangalore on Monday. ... His work on syntactic pattern recognition, carried out when he was spending a few years at Illinois, was seminal. He worked for over a decade on the modelling of natural language behaviour and on the evolution of language behaviour. ... Another long-term interest of Dr. Narasimhan has been in IT policy issues vis-À-vis developing countries."

• R Narasimhan passes away. The Hindu (September 3, 2007). "Narasimhan was the first president of the Computer Society of India (CSI) and a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences. He had also penned four books in areas of artificial intelligence and linguistics."

N

· Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 - July 19, 1992).

• In Pursuit of Mind: The Research of Allen Newell. By John E. Laird and Paul S. Rosenbloom. AI Magazine 13(4): Winter 1992, 17-45. A brief review of Allen Newell's research career, starting with symbolic computation in 1954, and continuing through the present involving Soar and its ramifications. Included within the article is a remembrance of Allen Newell written by Herbert Simon.
• A Biographical Memoir by Herbert A. Simon (1997). From the National Academy of Sciences' collection of Biographical Memoirs. "With the death from cancer on July 19, 1992, of Allen Newell the field of artificial intelligence lost one of its premier scientists, who was at the forefront of the field from its first stirrings to the time of his death and whose research momentum had not shown the slightest diminution up to the premature end of his career. ... If you asked Allen Newell what he was, he would say, 'I am a scientist.' He played that role almost every waking hour of every day of his adult life. How would he have answered the question, 'What kind of scientist?' We humans have long been obsessed with four great questions: the nature of matter, the origins of the universe, the nature of life, the workings of mind. Allen Newell chose for his life's work answering the fourth of these questions. He was a person who not only dreamt but gave body to his dream, brought it to life. He had a vision of what human thinking is. He spent his life enlarging that vision, shaping it, materializing it in a sequence of computer programs that exhibited the very intelligence they explained."
• Allen Newell: A Remembrance. By Nico Haberman. AI Magazine13(4): Winter 1992, 2.
• Allen Newell Collection. A full-text digital archive from Carnegie Mellon Libraries.
• Allen Newell. Oral history interview by Arthur L. Norberg, 10-12 June 1991, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Norman Nielsen: In Memoriam. By Ray Perrault. AI Magazine 24(1): Spring 2003, 6-12. "Norman Nielsen, the secretary-treasurer of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) since 1992, died at his home on 25 December 2002. Since 1975, Norm was an information technology consultant for SRI International and its subsidiaries ... a seasoned traveler ... a devoted outdoorsman ... and a lifelong lover of trains."

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Dennis O'Connor (1938-1992): In Memoriam. By Raj Reddy. AI Magazine 13(2): Summer 1992, 8. "Dennis was recently recognized by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence with the first-ever annual Outstanding Contribution Award for Innovative Artificial Intelligence Applications."

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• Robin John Popplestone: In Memoriam. AI Magazine 25(2): Summer 2004, 5. "Robin John Popplestone, one of the early pioneers in robotics and computer programming languages, died on April 14, 2004, in Glasgow, Scotland. ... In 1990, he was selected as a founding fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in recognition of his seminal contributions to AI."

Kvetoslav "Slava" Prazdny: In Memorium. By Mike Baird, Perry W. Thorndyke, Jay M. Tenenbaum. AI Magazine 8(4): Winter 1987, 105. "Kvetoslav 'Slava' Prazdny, who died September 19, 1987 in a hang-gliding accident in the California mountains, was recognized internationally as an expert in many aspects of human and machine perception. He had published over 60 articles reporting research in human perception, stereo vision, image processing, robotics, perceptual reasoning and learning, adaptive neural networks, and psychophysics. A redwood tree in Big Basin State Park is dedicated in his memory."

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Ray Reiter (1939-2002): In Memory of. By Fiora Pirri, Geoffrey Hinton, and Hector Levesque. AI Magazine 23(4): Winter, 2002, 93. "Ray dedicated his life to his research with the wonder of a child, the fearlessness of an explorer, the precision of a mathematician, and the tirelessness of a researcher who found shallowness and confusion intolerable. He leaves a legacy of groundbreaking, deep insights that have changed the course of AI."

· In Memoriam: Raymond Reiter. By Jack Minker. AI Magazine 24(1): Spring 2003, 13-18. "Raymond Reiter, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and winner of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence 1993 Outstanding Research Scientist Award, died September 16, 2002, after a year-long struggle with cancer. Reiter, known throughout the world as 'Ray,' made foundational contributions to artifial intelligence, knowledge representation and databases, and theorem proving."

· Edward M. Riseman (1942 - 2007): In Memoriam. Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst. "Riseman immediately started his research in character recognition upon arrival at UMass Amherst. He was willing to define his problem in its most difficult form, the recognition of hand written characters. ... Riseman’s research reflected a broad interest in computer vision and artificial intelligence, including knowledge-based image understanding, stereo and motion analysis, autonomous vehicle navigation, learning, three-dimensional reconstruction, image databases, content-based image retrieval and parallel processing, and architectures for computer vision. ... Riseman was instrumental in the establishment and success of the Department’s Computer Vision Laboratory, which he co-directed with Professor Allen Hanson. Riseman and Hanson also founded Amerinex Artificial Intelligence Corporation and Dataviews Corporation (formerly VI Corporation), both visual technology oriented companies located in the Amherst, Massachusetts area."

• In Memorium: Edward Riseman. In AAAI News. By Carol Hamilton. AI Magazine28(2): Summer 2007, 4-6.

· Charles Rosen, 85, Engineer and Winemaker Is Dead. By Frank J. Prial. The New York Times (December 29, 2002). "Charles A. Rosen, an engineer who was an early researcher in robotic and artificial intelligence and a founder of Ridge Vineyards in Cupertino, Calif., died on Dec. 8 at his home in Atherton, Calif. ... Born in Montreal, Mr. Rosen came to the United States as a teenager. ... During World War II, he returned to Canada to work on Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft being sent to Britain. After the war, he worked on transistor theory at General Electric Research Laboratories in Schenectady, N.Y., and was the coauthor of an early book on the subject. In the 1950's he moved to California to join the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, where his efforts included projects to develop 'neural networks,' learning machines based on the organization of the biological brain rather than on digital computers. With other institute scientists, he developed one of the early mobile, intelligent robots."

• In Memoriam: Charles Rosen. By Peter E. Hart and Nils J. Nilsson. AI Magazine 24(1): Spring 2003, 6-12.
• Charles Rosen -- expert on robots, co-founder of winery. By Wyatt Buchanan. San Francisco Chronicle (December 20, 2002). "Charles Rosen, who pioneered artificial intelligence in the 1960s and 1970s and helped found one of California's best known wineries, died in Atherton on Dec. 8, one day after his 85th birthday. ... Mr. Rosen did his groundbreaking artificial intelligence work while at Stanford Research Institute, known now as SRI International, a Menlo Park nonprofit research and development organization. His success came from his ability to find the edge of creative thought and innovation in his discipline and to push past the known limits, friends and colleagues say, developing things like neural networks in machines and Shakey, the first robot to see and learn on its own."
• A.I. research pioneer dies. San Mateo County Times (December 25, 2002). "Rosen created 'Shakey,' the first mobile robot that could reason about its actions. In 1966, Shakey was equipped with a television camera, range finder, collision detectors, and a reasoning program that allowed it to execute simple tasks such as moving a box around a room. 'It was the first robot that had the ability to make plans and perceive its environment,' said Nils Nilsson, emeritus professor of computer science at Stanford University. ... Rosen was also an accomplished winemaker and co-founded Ridge Vineyards with some scientist friends. ...He also started a company that sold a mix for making pickles at home and two years ago invented a device to dispense inhaled drugs."

· Azriel Rosenfeld [1931-2004]: In memoriam. News release from the Center for Automation Research, University of Maryland. "Azriel Rosenfeld was a tenured Research Professor, a Distinguished University Professor, and Director of the Center for Automation Research at the University of Maryland in College Park.... Dr. Rosenfeld was widely regarded as the leading researcher in the world in the field of computer image analysis. Over a period of nearly 40 years he made many fundamental and pioneering contributions to nearly every area of that field. He wrote the first textbook in the field (1969); was founding editor of its first journal (1972); and was co-chairman of its first international conference (1987). ... [H]e was a founding Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (1990)...."

• In Memoriam: Azriel Rosenfeld. AI Magazine 25(2): Summer 2004, 5. "He was a founding fellow (1990) of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence."

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· Arthur Samuel. By John McCarthy (with additional material by Ed Feigenbaum). "Arthur Samuel (1901-1990) was a pioneer of artificial intelligence research. From 1949 through the late 1960s, he did the best work in making computers learn from their experience. His vehicle for this was the game of checkers. Programs for playing games often fill the role in artificial intelligence research that the fruit fly Drosophila plays in genetics."

Claude Shannon.Time Magazine, March 12, 2001 (Vol. 157, No. 10). "His later work with chess-playing machines helped create the field of artificial intelligence."

• Claude Who? The Passing of Another Computing Pioneer Reminds Us of How Much We Have Already Forgotten. By Robert X. Cringely. I, Cringely column, available from PBS (March 1, 2001).
• Claude Shannon, Mathematician, Dies at 84. By George Johnson. The New York Times (February 27, 2001).
• Claude Shannon: Reluctant Father of the Digital Age. By M. Mitchell Waldrop. MIT Technology Review (July/August 2001).
• Claude Shannon (b. 1916) Bit Player. By James Gleick. New York Times Magazine (December 30, 2001). "Shannon is the father of information theory, an actual science devoted to messages and signals and communication and computing. The advent of information theory can be pretty well pinpointed: July 1948, the Bell System Technical Journal, his landmark paper titled simply 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication.'
• "Claude Shannon's 'A mathematical theory of communication' was first published in two parts in the July and October 1948 editions of the Bell System Technical Journal." Bell Labs offers the BSTJ version of this paper ("with a number of corrections").
• Claude E. Shannon: Founder of Information Theory. By Graham P. Collins. Scientific American Explore (October 14, 2002).

· Robert F. Simmons - In Memoriam. By Gordon S. Novak, Jr.. AI Magazine 16(3): Fall 1995, 65-66. "[He] joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 1968 as a professor of computer sciences as well as psychology. ... He was especially gifted as a supervisor of graduate students. He had a marvelous ability to grasp the overview when the graduate student was lost in the details."

· Herbert A. Simon. Father of artificial intelligence and Nobel Prize winner. Obituary (February 10, 2001) By Byron Spice, Science Editor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Herbert A. Simon, whose curiosity about how people make decisions helped lay the groundwork for such fields as artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology and won him the 1978 Nobel Prize in economics, died yesterday at age 84."

• Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon Dies at Age 84 (Obituary). AI Magazine 22(1): Spring 2001, 4. "AAAI Fellow Herbert A. Simon, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in economics and many prestigious international scientific awards for his work in cognitive psychology and computer science, died February 9, 2001, at the age of 84. Simon's research ranged from computer science to psychology, administration and economics. The thread of continuity through all of his work was his interest in human decision-making and problem solving processes and the implications of these processes for social institutions. He made extensive use of the computer as a tool for simulating human thinking, and was widely considered to be a founder of the field of artificial intelligence."
• Obituary. The Economist. (February 22, 2001). "His strictly scientific aims, he said, were limited to using computers to understand how humans think, and as an aid to human thinking. What about the soul? No one, he said, would tell him what the soul was. When someone did, he said thoughtfully, he would program one."
• A Life of the Mind: Remembering Herb Simon. By David Klahr and Kenneth Kotovsky. APS Observer (April 2001). "Herb lived a simple life. He walked to work from his home a mile from Carnegie Mellon. He hated air conditioning, refused to move his office into the renovated wings of our building, and for years after the dissemination of word-processors, continued to type his manuscripts on a manual typewriter. His home was warm and inviting but not in the least pretentious.His life was a life of the mind. He inhabited his office for long hours on weekdays and weekends as well. Entering that office was an intellectual adventure."
• Herbert A. Simon: AI Pioneer. By Scott L. Andresen. IEEE Intelligent Systems (July/August 2001) 16(4): 71 - 72.
• Herbert Simon Collection. A full-text digital archive from Carnegie Mellon Libraries.

Push Singh (1972-2006): In Memoriam. By James Hendler. IEEE Intelligent Systems (May/June 2006) 21(3): 15. "Push Singh, one of IEEE Intelligent Systems 'AI Ten to Watch' recipients this year, died 28 February 2006. He was slated to begin a position as a faculty member in the MIT Media Laboratory. His PhD advisor, Marvin Minsky, was one of many people who will miss him and his work, which was based partly on Marvin's society-of-minds approach, exploring what common sense was and how it could develop."

Sony's Aibo: For Sony's Robotic Aibo, It's the Last Year of the Dog. By Eric A. Taub. The New York Times (January 30, 2006). "There was sad news last week for enthusiasts of the Aibo Entertainment Robot from Sony: the doglike machine, which walks, barks and recognizes speech, is being put to sleep, the company said."

• Also see:
  • Sony puts Aibo to sleep. By John Borland. CNET News.com (January 26, 2006). "It's the oldest story in the book: Robotic dog turns up on your doorstop looking cute and winsome, learns a few words and tricks, and then gets canceled just as you've gotten to love it. As part of its ongoing cost-cutting and reorganization effort, Sony has cut its line of robotic Aibo dogs...."
  • Rest in Peace, Sony Aibo - Owners sad as toy robots canned as firm focuses on core products. By Therese Poletti. Mercury News & MercuryNews.com (January 27, 2006). "The Aibo lived seven years -- or 49 if you count robotic dog years. On Thursday, Sony pulled the plug on Aibo, its peppy robotic dog with a software-controlled personality and abilities that has entertained thousands of faithful owners. ... 'It really is sad,' said David Calkins, a professor of robotics at San Francisco State University. Calkins uses several Aibos to teach students about robotics by playing robo-soccer. Many other universities with robotics programs also use Aibos as a teaching tool."
• Man Bites Robotic Dog. By Leah Hoffmann. Forbes.com (January 27, 2006). "It sang. It danced. It fetched. It never made a mess, though once--we swear--it lifted its leg as though marking its territory near a Majesty Palm in our office. Yet Sony's cute robotic dog, Aibo will soon be put to sleep."

· Karen Spärck Jones (26 August 1935 – 4 April 2007). Press release from the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge (April 4, 2007). "Karen Spärck Jones, who has died this morning aged 71, was Emeritus Professor of Computing and Information at the University of Cambridge and one of the most remarkable women in computer science. A Fellow of the British Academy, of which she was Vice-President from 2000 to 2002, she had a long, rich and remarkable career as a pioneer of information science from the very early days of computing to the present day. She had worked in automatic language and information processing research since the late 1950s when she co-authored a paper in one of the great founding collections of the discipline, the Proceedings of the 1958 International Conference on Scientific Information in Washington, DC. She made outstanding theoretical contributions to information retrieval and natural language processing and built upon this theoretical framework through numerous experiments. Her work is among the most highly cited in the field and has influenced a whole generation of researchers and practitioners. ... Karen was a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI), and was President of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) in 1994. She received several major awards for her research including, in 2004, the ACL Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2007, the British Computer Society (BCS) Lovelace Medal and the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM)/ AAAI Allen Newell Award."

• Also see :
  • Karen Spärck Jones. In AAAI News. By Carol Hamilton. AI Magazine 28(2): Summer 2007, 6.
  • Computing's too important to be left to men. BCS managing editor Brian Runciman's interview with Karen Sparck-Jones, winner of the 2007 BCS Lovelace Medal. The British Computer Society (March 2007). "[Q] By way of introduction, can you tell us something about your work? [A] In some respects I'm not a central computing person, on the other hand the area I've worked in has become more central and important to computing. I've always worked in what I like to call natural language information processing. That is to say dealing with information in natural language and information that is conveyed by natural language, because that's what we use. ..."
  • Obituary - Professor Karen Sparck Jones, Cambridge computer scientist. By Martin Campbell-Kelly. The Independent Online Edition (April 12, 2007). "Today, anyone who uses Google to hunt for information on the World Wide Web is making use of fundamental research conducted by Karen Spärck Jones which began in the 1950s and is now woven into the fabric of computing. She worked in machine translation and information retrieval, which for some years were poorly supported by the funding agencies, until the arrival of the Internet and massive improvements in computer capabilities propelled them to the centre of today's networked world. ... During the 1980s Spärck Jones became increasingly involved in what she called 'heavy-duty public service'. She was the principal advisor to the Alvey Directorate in Intelligent Knowledge Based Systems. In 1985 she was a founder of, and taught on, a master's course on computer speech and language understanding - which produced a generation of research associates and graduate students. ... Her many honours included the lifetime achievement award of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the Lovelace Medal of the British Computer Society."
  • Computer Science, A Woman's Work. Editorial. IEEE Spectrum Online (May 2007). "In addition to her formidable intellectual contributions, Spärck Jones was an advocate for women in computer science (her slogan was 'computing is too important to be left to men') and a teacher and mentor to generations of students. She also promoted a kind of professionalism in computer science rarely spoken about today."

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· Donald E. Walker: A Remembrance. By Barbara Grosz and Jerry R. Hobbs. AI Magazine 15(1): Spring 1994, 23-25. "Don Walker had a vision of how natural language technology could help solve people's problems. He knew the challenges were great and would require the efforts of many people. He had a genius for bringing these people together."

Donald A. Waterman. By Robert Engelmore. AI Magazine 8(1): Spring 1987, 24-25. "We note with sorrow the passing of Don Waterman, who died on January 4, 1987. Don was one of the pioneers of our field, whose early research built the foundation for the area that would later come to be labeled 'knowledge based systems' (and still later 'expert systems')."

Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85. By John Markoff. The New York Times (March 13, 2008). "Joseph Weizenbaum, whose famed conversational computer program, Eliza, foreshadowed the potential of artificial intelligence, but who grew skeptical about the potential for technology to improve the human condition, died on March 5 in Gröben, Germany. ... Eliza, written while Mr. Weizenbaum was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964 and 1965 and named after Eliza Doolittle, who learned proper English in 'Pygmalion' and 'My Fair Lady,' was a groundbreaking experiment in the study of human interaction with machines. ... The seductiveness of the conversations alarmed Mr. Weizenbaum, who came to believe that an obsessive reliance on technology was indicative of a moral failing in society, an observation rooted in his experiences as a child growing up in Nazi Germany. ... Mr. Weizenbaum also believed that there were transcendent qualities in the human experience that could not be duplicated in interactions with machines. He described it in his book as 'the wordless glance that a father and mother share over the bed of their sleeping child,' Ms. [Sherry] Turkle said. The book drove a wedge between Mr. Weizenbaum and other members of the artificial intelligence research community."

• IT pioneer Joseph Weizenbaum dies. By Christoph Hammerschmidt. EE Times (March 7, 2008). "Computer pioneer and philosopher Joseph Weizenbaum (85) has died in Berlin. The scientist and MIT professor emeritus was known for his critical position towards the impact of information technology to society. … Among his major achievements were studies over the SLIP programming language and research on basic software technologies which today are in widespread use such as garbage collection algorithms. One of his most influential works was the development of the natural language processor ELIZA which is said to be one of the early breakthroughs for Artificial Intelligence. In this context, he developed a program simulating a conversation between a physician and a patient. … He co-founded the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility group."
• Joseph Weizenbaum, professor emeritus of computer science, 85. MIT News (March 10, 2008). "Joseph Weizenbaum, professor emeritus of computer science at MIT who grew skeptical of artificial intelligence after creating a program that made many users feel like they were speaking with an empathic psychologist, died March 5 in Berlin. ... In 1955, Weizenbaum became a member of the General Electric team that designed and built the first computer system dedicated to banking operations. Among his early technical contributions were the list processing system SLIP and the natural language understanding program ELIZA, which was an important development in artificial intelligence and cemented his role in the folklore of computer science research. ELIZA was perhaps the first instance of what today is known as a chatterbot program."
• Joseph Weizenbaum, 85, MIT professor, humanist. By J.M. Lawrence. The Boston Globe | Boston.com (March 16, 2008). "One of his four daughters, Sharon Weizenbaum, recalled playing with the Eliza program in her father's study at her childhood home in Concord. 'Eliza was something that was fun to fool around with,' she said. 'It was like a game but we didn't know these amazing things were happening.. ... He programmed Eliza to respond to users as a psychotherapist might, reframing statements as questions, and to otherwise use a person's responses to craft replies. When users began to confide in Eliza, now known as a simple chatterbot program, Mr. Weizenbaum was shocked and began questioning the explosion of technology as a solution to human problems. By 1976, he authored 'Computer Power and Human Reason,' spurring debate about human relationships with machines and separating himself from promoters of artificial intelligence. 'The relevant issues are neither technological nor even mathematical; they are ethical,' he told the Globe in 1981. 'Since we do not now have ways of making computers wise, we ought not now give computers tasks that demand wisdom.' Mr. Weizenbaum advised outlawing 'all projects that propose to substitute a computer system for a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding, and love.' ... According to his daughter Miriam Weizenbaum of Providence, Mr. Weizenbaum embraced the internet and other consumer technology in his later years, but became increasingly outspoken about the use of technology in war to create longer distances between humans and the consequences of their decisions."

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