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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  · 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,"
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. 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."
 · 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."
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."
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.) 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.'"
George C. Devol, Inventor of Robot Arm, Dies at 99. By JEREMY PEARCE, NY Times, (August 15, 2011). "George C. Devol, a largely self-taught inventor who drew from science fiction to help develop Unimate, the revolutionary mechanical arm that became a prototype for robots now widely used on automobile assembly lines and in other industries, died on Thursday at his home in Wilton, Conn." 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."
 · 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."
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."
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." Professor Richard Gregory, artificial intelligence pioneer, 86. (27 May 2010). Scotsman (Edinburgh). "Professor Richard Gregory, the man behind the pioneering Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, has died aged 86. Mr Gregory was a pioneer of human psychology, and made significant advances in the fast-changing world of artificial intelligence." DAVID BENDEL HERTZ, 92, died on June 13, 2011 in Miami, FL. Dr. Hertz was a Professor Emeritus at the University of Miami, where he served as a Distinguished Professor of Artificial Intelligence, director of the Intelligent Computer Systems Research Institute, and professor of management science as well as law. He was internationally renowned for his work in artificial intelligence and neural networks, and was a specialist in operations research, systems and risk analysis, and computer law. Louis Hodes, 74, a mathematician and scientist who conducted groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence, computer programming language and cancer research, died June 30, 2008. (August 1, 2008 ) Washington Post. "Dr. Hodes was a member of the artificial intelligence group of the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics and did pioneering work in the development of the computer programming language LISP, which was used in artificial intelligence research. He also is credited with being one of the first people to recognize that logic could be used as a programming language. In 1966, Dr. Hodes joined NIH and worked in the artificial intelligence laboratory before moving to the National Cancer Institute. There he worked on computer tools for biomedical applications, including developing a software for online analysis of biomedical images." Dr. Peter Eric Jackson, 62 of Burnsville, passed away at home on Aug. 3, 2011. (August 14, 2011). Minneapolis/St.Paul Star Tribune. "Peter received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Leeds University, UK. He taught at Edinburgh University, Scotland, and Clarkson University in New York. Most recently, he served as Chief Scientist and Vice President R&D for Thomson Reuters." 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." Rob Kling, 58; Specialist in Computers' Societal Effect. By Myrna Oliver. Los Angeles Times (May 26, 2003). "Rob Kling, an author and educator regarded as the founding father of social informatics -- how computers influence social change -- has died. ... Concerned that all discussion of computers focused on technology, Kling studied government, manufacturers and insurance companies to determine how computers affect society and require choices that consider human values as well as technological values. ... 'Many people, particularly white-collar workers, have a view that the best factory is one where almost nobody is there,' he said in a speech to the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility meeting at Chapman University in 1985. 'Most functions are automated. In this view the factory is a production machine, a gadget, and there's no honorable role for people except to fill in where the machines aren't good enough yet.'" 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."
· 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." 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."
J. C. R. ("Lick") Licklider died 26 June 1990. Obituary as submitted to Journal Acoustical Society of Amer. "Lick had enthusiasm for both basic and applied science. He participated in, and managed, some major applied research and development projects (examples: computer processing-technique developments, Project 'MAC' at MIT; air defense, Project Charles; undersea warfare, Project Hartwell; the first nation-wide computer network, ARPANET; library automation, Project INTREX). He was instrumental, in the 1970's, in planning, promoting and supervising, a government sponsored multi-year, multi-university and research institute program of research on speech understanding by computer techniques." 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." See also OBITUARY: Christopher Longuet-Higgins by Mark Steedman, a former student. (Automatic download of pdf file.) · John McCarthy. Remembering John McCarthy: A tribute to the man who made Lisp. IEEE Spectrum (December 2011), By Steven Cherry. This past October saw the death of John McCarthy, one of the pioneers of computer science and a founder of the field of artificial intelligence (AI), a phrase he is credited with inventing. Other obituaries from:
McCarthy created the term "artificial intelligence" and was a towering figure in computer science at Stanford most of his professional life. In his career, he developed the programming language LISP, played computer chess via telegraph with opponents in Russia and invented computer time-sharing.
David Marr (a short biography), by S. Edelman and L. M. Vaina, International Encyclopaedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Pergamon, 2001 (to appear). Dr. William A. Martin, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and at the MIT Sloan School of Management, died Tuesday, June 2, 1981. Obituary in MIT Tech Talk, June 10, 1981, page 3. "Professor Martin, whose main interest was in the practical application of artificial intelligence, was associated with the Laboratory for Computer Science and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. His work involved computer programs that embody various forms of expertise---mathematical, medical, management or linguistic---and the application of this expertise to practical ends." Bernard Meltzer, pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, died on 4th of July 2008, aged 92. The University of Edinburgh School of Informatics. "[He] set up an independent research unit to pursue his new interests. Called the Metamathematics Unit, it quickly established an international reputation as a centre for research in artificial intelligence, extending the scope of its work for automatic proof of mathematical theorems to the programming of the other activities such as induction and ‘commonsense’ reasoning ..." · 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."
 · 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."
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." 
Pragnesh Jay Modi. In AAAI News. By Carol Hamilton. AI Magazine 28(2): Summer 2007, 6.
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."  AI Magazine cover: Newell"· Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 - July 19, 1992).
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." 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." Obituary: Harry E. Pople / Pitt professor, researcher who always asked, 'How does this work?' May 18, 1934 - March 26, 2011 (March 29, 2011). By Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Starting in the early 1970s, he became a Pitt professor teaching overlapping disciplines in business, computer science and neurology. He collaborated with Jack Myers, chairman of internal medicine in Pitt's School of Medicine, in developing a computer program called Internist that was far advanced for its time in diagnosing disease based on information about symptoms." 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." 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."
· 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: Azriel Rosenfeld [1931-2004]. AI Magazine 25(2): Summer 2004, 5. "He was a founding fellow (1990) of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence." Sam Roweis died unexpectedly on January 12, 2010. (5 February 2010) Modified version of the obituary written for the NYU webpages. "Sam was a brilliant scientist and engineer whose work deeply influenced the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, applied mathematics, neural computation, and observational science. He was also a strong advocate for the use of machine learning and computational statistics for scientific data analysis and discovery." · David Rumelhart Dies at 68; Created Computer Simulations of Perception NYTimes (March 18, 2011). By BENEDICT CAREY. "Dr. Rumelhart and his colleague Jay McClelland, around 1980, built computer programs that roughly simulated perception. Later, he devised an algorithm that allowed computer programs to learn how to perceive. Using his program, a computer could interpret underwater sonar signals with roughly the accuracy that a person could. It was an important early step in machine learning, a critical component in artificial intelligence. " 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." · Oliver Selfridge. NY Times, December 4, 2008 (by JOHN MARKOFF). "Oliver G. Selfridge, an innovator in early computer science and artificial intelligence, died on Wednesday in Boston. He was 82. ... Credited with coining the term “intelligent agents,” for software programs capable of observing and responding to changes in their environment, Mr. Selfridge theorized about far more, including devices that would not only automate certain tasks but also learn through practice how to perform them better, faster and more cheaply." 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."
· 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."
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." Ray Solomonoff, Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 83. (January 10, 2010) New York Times, By JOHN MARKOFF. "Ray Solomonoff, a physicist who was one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence, died on Dec. 7 [2009] in Boston. He was 83 and had homes in New Ipswich, N.H., and Cambridge, Mass." 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."
· 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."
· Professor Leonard M. Uhr died on October 5, 2000. "As one of the initial members of the [University of Wisconsin] Computer Sciences Department (which had been established only a year prior to his joining), Professor Uhr was instrumental in initiating the Department's curriculum and research in artificial intelligence, and he was centrally influential in shaping their maturation and evolution over his entire 26 years as an active faculty member."  · 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." · David L. Waltz. David L. Waltz, a computer scientist whose early research in information retrieval provided the foundation for today’s Internet search engines, died on Thursday in Princeton, N.J. He was 68. During his career as a teacher and a technologist at start-up companies as well as large corporate laboratories, Dr. Waltz made fundamental contributions to computer science in areas ranging from computer vision to machine learning. 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."
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