Carl Herbert Smith (1950–2004) was an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. He was a pioneer in

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and explores the relationships between these classifications. A computational problem ...

and

computational learning theory In computer science, computational learning theory (or just learning theory) is a subfield of artificial intelligence devoted to studying the design and analysis of machine learning algorithms. Overview Theoretical results in machine learning m ...

. Smith was program manager of the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the Abstraction, abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The Associati ...

program, and editor of the '' International Journal of the Foundations of Computer Science'', ''

Theoretical Computer Science Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the Abstraction, abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The Associati ...

'', and ''

Fundamenta Informaticae ''Fundamenta Informaticae'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering computer science. The editor-in-chief is Bartek Klin. It was established in 1977 by the Polish Mathematical Society as Series IV of the '' Annales Societatis Mathematicae Po ...

''. He held professorships at

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

and the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...

. He organized the first conferences on computational learning in the U.S. in the 1980s. He earned a PhD from the State University at Buffalo in 1979, and received

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

degree from the

University of Latvia University of Latvia (, shortened ''LU'') is a public research university located in Riga, Latvia. The university was established in 1919. History The University of Latvia, initially named as the Higher School of Latvia () was founded on Se ...

in 1993. He was a member of the

Latvian Academy of Sciences The Latvian Academy of Sciences (, ) is the official science academy of Latvia and is an association of the country's foremost scientists. The academy was founded as the ''Latvian SSR Academy of Sciences'' (). It is located in Riga. The curren ...

. He was the author of the popular textbooks '' Theory of Computation: A Gentle Introduction'' and '' A Recursive Introduction to the Theory of Computation''. He died of brain cancer in 2004.

References

American computer scientists 1950 births 2004 deaths University of Latvia alumni University at Buffalo alumni {{US-compu-bio-stub