Bernard Meltzer (born in 1916 in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring count ...

; died on 4 July 2008) was a British computer scientist, who with Donald Michie was one of the main founders of research on

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...

at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

. Meltzer studied physics at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

with a bachelor's degree in 1934, and was briefly a physics demonstrator in Cape Town. He emigrated to Great Britain, where he worked for the

Marconi Company The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company that did business under that name from 1963 to 1987. Its roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 ...

and, after the start of the Second World War, for the Telecommunications Research Establishment conducting research on radar. In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and from 1943 taught radar and electronics to military personnel at the

University of Aberdeen , mottoeng = The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom , established = , type = Public research universityAncient university , endowment = £58.4 million (2021) , budget ...

. After the war he went into industry (Mullard's Radio Valve Company, from 1949 in the research laboratories of EMI). In 1953 he received his doctorate from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degre ...

in mathematical physics with

Reinhold Furth Prof Reinhold Heinrich (Henry) Furth (20 October 1893 – 17 July 1979) was a German-speaking physicist born in Prague, noted for his 1951 BAAS lecture Physics and Social Equilibrium. He is also remembered for his 1934 theory that stars are compo ...

(1893–1979). In 1955 he became a lecturer and later a reader in the electrical engineering department of the University of Edinburgh, doing research in electronics (both semiconductors and tubes). His research on ion propulsion resulted in an invitation from

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

to Stanford University in 1962. Meltzer also had an interest in mathematical logic and began to work in computer science and artificial intelligence. 1964/65 he worked at the Atlas Computer Laboratory of the Science Research Council and then founded the Metamathematics Unit at the University of Edinburgh. The focus of the Unit was on automatic proof methods. In 1972 he received the chair of Computational Logic (corresponding to the name of the new department, which succeeded the Metamathematics Unit). From 1974 to 1977 he was head of the Department of Artificial Intelligence. In 1978 he retired. Edinburgh became a center of artificial intelligence under him and Donald Michie, with scientists such as

Robert Kowalski Robert Anthony Kowalski (born 15 May 1941) is an American-British logician and computer scientist, whose research is concerned with developing both human-oriented models of computing and computational models of human thinking. He has spent m ...

(who was one of the founders of logic programming in the early 1970s) and Alan Bundy. J Strother Moore (who received his doctorate there in 1973), Robert S. Boyer (visiting scholar 1971 to 1973) and Pat Hayes (like Robert Kowalski, his doctoral student). With Donald Michie he published the series '' Machine Intelligence '' (Volumes 4 to 7) from 1969 to 1972.mi.html Machine Intelligence Series
/ref> In 1979 he received the first Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award.

References

External links

Obituary at the University of Edinburgh
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meltzer, Bernard British computer scientists South African computer scientists Academics of the University of Edinburgh 1916 births 2008 deaths South African emigrants to the United Kingdom