Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was a researcher in
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
and
cognitive psychology at the
RAND Corporation and at
Carnegie Mellon University’s
School of Computer Science,
Tepper School of Business, and Department of Psychology. He contributed to the
Information Processing Language (1956) and two of the earliest
AI programs, the
Logic Theory Machine (1956) and the
General Problem Solver (1957) (with
Herbert A. Simon). He was awarded the
ACM's
A.M. Turing Award along with
Herbert A. Simon in 1975 for their basic contributions to artificial intelligence and the psychology of human cognition.
Early studies
Newell completed his Bachelor's degree in physics from
Stanford in 1949. He was a graduate student at
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
from 1949–1950, where he did mathematics. Due to his early exposure to an unknown field known as
game theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents. Myerson, Roger B. (1991). ''Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict,'' Harvard University Press, p.&nbs1 Chapter-preview links, ppvii–xi It has appli ...
and the experiences from the study of mathematics, he was convinced that he would prefer a combination of experimental and theoretical research to pure mathematics.
In 1950, he left Princeton and joined the
RAND Corporation in Santa Monica where he worked for "a group that was studying logistics problems of the Air Force" (Simon). His work with
Joseph Kruskal
Joseph Bernard Kruskal, Jr. (; January 29, 1928 – September 19, 2010) was an American mathematician, statistician, computer scientist and psychometrician.
Personal life
Kruskal was born to a Jewish family in New York City to a successful fur ...
led to the creation of two theories: A Model for Organization Theory and Formulating Precise Concepts in Organization Theory. Newell eventually earned his PhD from the now
Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon with Herbert Simon serving as his advisor.
Afterwards, Newell "turned to the design and conduct of laboratory experiments on decision making in small groups" (Simon). He was dissatisfied, however, with the accuracy and validity of their findings produced from small-scale laboratory experiments. He joined with fellow RAND teammates John Kennedy, Bob Chapman, and Bill Biel at an Air Force
Early Warning Station to study organizational processes in flight crews. They received funding from the Air Force in 1952 to build a simulator that would enable them to examine and analyze the interactions in the cockpit related to decision-making and information-handling. From these studies, Newell came to believe that
information processing
Information processing is the change (processing) of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process that ''describes'' everything that happens (changes) in the universe, from the falling of a rock (a change in posi ...
is the central activity in organizations.
Artificial intelligence
In September 1954, Newell enrolled in a seminar where
Oliver Selfridge
Oliver Gordon Selfridge (10 May 1926 – 3 December 2008) was a pioneer of artificial intelligence. He has been called the "Father of Machine Perception." Biography
Selfridge, born in England, was a grandson of Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founde ...
"described a running computer program that learned to recognize letters and other patterns" (Simon). This was when Allen came to believe that systems may be created and contain intelligence and have the ability to adapt. With this in mind, Allen, after a couple of months, wrote in 1955 ''The Chess Machine: An Example of Dealing with a Complex Task by Adaptation'', which "outlined an imaginative design for a computer program to play
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
in humanoid fashion" (Simon).
His work came to the attention of economist (and future nobel laureate)
Herbert A. Simon, and, together with programmer
J. C. Shaw, they developed the first true
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...
program, the
Logic Theorist. Newell's work on the program laid the foundations of the field. His inventions included:
list processing, the most important programming paradigm used by AI ever since; the application of
means-ends analysis to general reasoning (or "reasoning as search"); and the use of
heuristics to limit the search space.
They presented the program at the
Dartmouth conference of 1956, an informal gathering of researchers who were interested in simulating intelligence with machines. The conference, now widely considered the "birth of artificial intelligence", was enormously influential and those who attended became the leaders of AI research for the next two decades, Newell included.
Later achievements
Newell and Simon formed a lasting partnership. They founded an artificial intelligence laboratory at
Carnegie Mellon University and produced a series of important programs and theoretical insights throughout the late fifties and sixties. This work included the
General Problem Solver, a highly influential implementation of
means–ends analysis, and the
physical symbol systems hypothesis, the controversial philosophical assertion that all intelligent behavior could be reduced to the kind of symbol manipulation that Newell's programs demonstrated.
Newell's work culminated in the development of a
cognitive architecture A cognitive architecture refers to both a theory about the structure of the human mind and to a computational instantiation of such a theory used in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and computational cognitive science. The formalized mod ...
known as
Soar and his
unified theory of cognition, published in 1990, but their improvement was the objective of his efforts up to his death
one of the last Newell's letters. The field of cognitive architectures, that he initiated, is still active in both the artificial intelligence and computational cognitive science communities.
Awards and honors
* 1971 — John Danz Lecturer, University of Washington
* 1971 — Harry Goode Memorial Award,
American Federation of Information Processing Societies
* 1972 — Elected to member of the
United States National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the N ...
* 1972 — Elected to Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
* 1975 —
A. M. Turing Award (with
Herbert A. Simon),
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...
* 1976-77 —
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...
,
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowships to professionals who have demonstrated exceptional ...
* 1979 — Alexander C. Williams Jr. Award (with William C. Biel, Robert Chapman and John L. Kennedy), Human Factors Society
* 1980 — Elected to member of the
United States National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academ ...
* 1980 — First President,
American Association for Artificial Intelligence
* 1981 — Charter recipient of the
Computer Pioneer Award from the
IEEE Computer Society
* 1985 — Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award,
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
* 1986 — Doctor of Science (Honorary),
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...
* 1987 — William James Lectures, Harvard University
* 1989 — Award for Research Excellence, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
* 1989 — Doctor in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (Honorary),
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
* 1989 — William James Fellow Award (charter recipient),
American Psychological Society
* 1990 —
IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award
* 1990 —
IEEE W.R.G. Baker Prize Paper Award
* 1992 — U.S.
National Medal of Science
* 1992 —
The Franklin Institute’s
Louis E. Levy Medal
The
ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award was named in his honor. The
Award for Research Excellence of the
Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
The School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US is a school for computer science established in 1988. It has been consistently ranked among the top computer science programs over the decades. ...
was also named in his honor.
See also
*
List of pioneers in computer science
References
Further reading
*
*
Oral history interview with Allen Newellat
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Newell discusses his entry into computer science, funding for computer science departments and research, the development of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, including the work of
Alan Perlis an
Raj Reddy and the growth of the computer science and artificial intelligence research communities. Compares computer science programs at Stanford, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon.
*
online Artificial Intelligence exhibit
from Interaction-Design.org
by
Gualtiero Piccinini in New Dictionary of Scientific Biography,
Thomson Gale, ed.
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Newell, Allen
1927 births
1992 deaths
Carnegie Mellon University faculty
American cognitive psychologists
Computational psychologists
National Medal of Science laureates
Turing Award laureates
History of artificial intelligence
Princeton University alumni
Tepper School of Business alumni
American consciousness researchers and theorists
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Presidents of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni
Lowell High School (San Francisco) alumni