John McCarthy (computer scientist)
John McCarthyMcCarthyMcCarthy, John
John McCarthy (September 4, 1927 – October 24, 2011) was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist.wikipedia


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Artificial intelligence
AIA.I.artificially intelligent
McCarthy was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence. He coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), developed the Lisp programming language family, significantly influenced the design of the ALGOL programming language, popularized timesharing, invented garbage collection, and was very influential in the early development of AI.
The field of AI research was born at a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956, where the term "Artificial Intelligence" was coined by John McCarthy to distinguish the field from cybernetics and escape the influence of the cyberneticist Norbert Wiener.









Lisp (programming language)
LispLisp programming languageLisp 1.5
He coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), developed the Lisp programming language family, significantly influenced the design of the ALGOL programming language, popularized timesharing, invented garbage collection, and was very influential in the early development of AI.
John McCarthy developed Lisp in 1958 while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).



Turing Award
ACM Turing AwardA.M. Turing AwardA. M. Turing Award
He received many accolades and honors, such as the 1971 Turing Award for his contributions to the topic of AI, the United States National Medal of Science, and the Kyoto Prize.

ALGOL
ALGOL 60ALGOL programming languageALGOrithmic Language
He coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), developed the Lisp programming language family, significantly influenced the design of the ALGOL programming language, popularized timesharing, invented garbage collection, and was very influential in the early development of AI.

Dartmouth workshop
Dartmouth ConferenceDartmouth proposalDartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence
McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955, and organized the famous Dartmouth conference in Summer 1956.
In 1955, John McCarthy, then a young Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College, decided to organize a group to clarify and develop ideas about thinking machines.
Marvin Minsky
MinskyMarvin L. Minskyartificial intelligence
John McCarthy is one of the "founding fathers" of artificial intelligence, together with Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert A. Simon.
He joined the staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1958, and a year later he and John McCarthy initiated what is, named the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.



Garbage collection (computer science)
garbage collectiongarbage collectorgarbage-collected
Around 1959, he invented so-called "garbage collection" methods to solve problems in Lisp.
Garbage collection was invented by John McCarthy around 1959 to simplify manual memory management in Lisp.
Logic programming
logicRule-based programminglogic programming language
In 1958, he proposed the advice taker, which inspired later work on question-answering and logic programming.
Advocates of declarative representations were notably working at Stanford, associated with John McCarthy, Bertram Raphael and Cordell Green, and in Edinburgh, with John Alan Robinson (an academic visitor from Syracuse University), Pat Hayes, and Robert Kowalski.
Time-sharing
timesharingtime sharingtime-sharing system
He coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), developed the Lisp programming language family, significantly influenced the design of the ALGOL programming language, popularized timesharing, invented garbage collection, and was very influential in the early development of AI.
The first project to implement time-sharing of user programs was initiated by John McCarthy at MIT in 1959, initially planned on a modified IBM 704, and later on an additionally modified IBM 709 (one of the first computers powerful enough for time-sharing).

ALGOL 60
ALGOLALGOL 60 programming languageAlgol 60 Report
In 1958, McCarthy served on an ACM Ad hoc Committee on Languages that became part of the committee that designed ALGOL 60.
Dartmouth Time Sharing System
Dartmouth Time-Sharing SystemDTSSDartmouth College Timesharing System
McCarthy was instrumental in creation of three of the very earliest time-sharing systems (Compatible Time-Sharing System, BBN Time-Sharing System, and Dartmouth Time Sharing System).
Kurtz approached Kemeny in either 1961 or 1962, with the following proposal : all Dartmouth students would have access to computing, it should be free and open-access, and this could be accomplished via a creating a time-sharing system (which Kurtz had learned about from colleague John McCarthy at MIT, who suggested "why don't you guys do timesharing?").




Compatible Time-Sharing System
CTSSCompatible Time Sharing System
McCarthy was instrumental in creation of three of the very earliest time-sharing systems (Compatible Time-Sharing System, BBN Time-Sharing System, and Dartmouth Time Sharing System).
John McCarthy wrote a memo about that at MIT, after which a preliminary study committee and a working committee were established at MIT, to develop time sharing.
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Project MACMIT Artificial Intelligence LaboratoryComputer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
He helped to motivate the creation of Project MAC at MIT when he worked there, and at Stanford University, he helped establish the Stanford AI Laboratory, for many years a friendly rival to Project MAC.
An "AI Group" including Marvin Minsky (the director), John McCarthy (inventor of Lisp) and a talented community of computer programmers was incorporated into the newly formed Project MAC.


Kotok-McCarthy
first competition between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.The first international computer chess competition between the United States and the Soviet Union
In 1966, McCarthy and his team at Stanford wrote a computer program used to play a series of chess games with counterparts in the Soviet Union; McCarthy's team lost two games and drew two games (see Kotok-McCarthy).
Between 1959 and 1962, classmates Elwyn Berlekamp, Alan Kotok, Michael Lieberman, Charles Niessen and Robert A. Wagner wrote the program while students of John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advice taker
advice-taker
In 1958, he proposed the advice taker, which inspired later work on question-answering and logic programming.
The advice taker was a hypothetical computer program, proposed by John McCarthy in his 1958 paper "Programs with Common Sense".
Circumscription (logic)
circumscriptionfirst-order circumscription
From 1978 to 1986, McCarthy developed the circumscription method of non-monotonic reasoning.
Circumscription is a non-monotonic logic created by John McCarthy to formalize the common sense assumption that things are as expected unless otherwise specified.
Belmont High School (Los Angeles)
Belmont High SchoolBelmont High School (Los Angeles, California)Belmont
McCarthy was exceptionally intelligent, and graduated from Belmont High School two years early.


Stanford University centers and institutes
Freeman Spogli Institute for International StudiesStanford Artificial Intelligence LaboratoryCCRMA
He helped to motivate the creation of Project MAC at MIT when he worked there, and at Stanford University, he helped establish the Stanford AI Laboratory, for many years a friendly rival to Project MAC.
SAIL was started in 1963 by John McCarthy, after he moved from Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Stanford.



Solomon Lefschetz
LefschetzLefschetz, SolomonS. Lefschetz
He received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the institution in 1951 as a student of Solomon Lefschetz.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MITM.I.T.Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
He helped to motivate the creation of Project MAC at MIT when he worked there, and at Stanford University, he helped establish the Stanford AI Laboratory, for many years a friendly rival to Project MAC.









Frame problem
frameFrame problem (philosophy)framed
John McCarthy and Patrick J. Hayes defined this problem in their 1969 article, Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence.
McCarthy 91 function
The McCarthy 91 function is a recursive function, defined by the computer scientist John McCarthy as a test case for formal verification within computer science.
McCarthy Formalism
In computer science and recursion theory the McCarthy Formalism (1963) of computer scientist John McCarthy clarifies the notion of recursive functions by use of the IF-THEN-ELSE construction common to computer science, together with four of the operators of primitive recursive functions: zero, successor, equality of numbers and composition.
Franklin Institute Awards
Benjamin Franklin MedalJohn Scott MedalHoward N. Potts Medal







Les Earnest
Lester EarnestLester D. "Les" Earnest
His colleague Lester Earnest told the Los Angeles Times: "The Internet would not have happened nearly as soon as it did except for the fact that John initiated the development of time-sharing systems. We keep inventing new names for time-sharing. It came to be called servers ... Now we call it cloud computing. That is still just time-sharing. John started it."
Under founding director John McCarthy, he soon became deeply involved with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPAnet) startup committee.