John Clifford Shaw (February 23, 1922 – February 9, 1991) was a systems programmer at the

RAND Corporation The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the ...

. He is a coauthor of the first

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

program, the Logic Theorist, and was one of the developers of

General Problem Solver General Problem Solver (GPS) is a computer program created in 1957 by Herbert A. Simon, J. C. Shaw, and Allen Newell ( RAND Corporation) intended to work as a universal problem solver machine. In contrast to the former Logic Theorist project, ...

(universal problem

solver A solver is a piece of mathematical software, possibly in the form of a stand-alone computer program or as a Library (computing), software library, that 'solves' a mathematical problem. A solver takes problem descriptions in some sort of generic ...

machine) and

Information Processing Language Information Processing Language (IPL) is a programming language created by Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert A. Simon at RAND Corporation and the Carnegie Institute of Technology about 1956. Newell had the job of language specifier-appl ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

of the 1950s). Information Processing Language is considered the true "father" of the

JOSS JOSS (acronym for JOHNNIAC Open Shop System) was one of the first interactive, time-sharing programming languages. It pioneered many features that would become common in languages from the 1960s into the 1980s, including use of line numbers as bo ...

language. One of the most significant events that occurred in the programming was the development of the concept of list processing by Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon and Cliff Shaw during the development of the language IPL-V. He invented the

linked list In computer science, a linked list is a linear collection of data elements whose order is not given by their physical placement in memory. Instead, each element points to the next. It is a data structure consisting of a collection of nodes whi ...

, which remains fundamental in many strands of modern computing technology.

References

External links

*Simon, Herbert A
Allen Newell
- a referenced biography of Newell and Shaw at the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, 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 ...

. * People in information technology Artificial intelligence researchers Carnegie Mellon University faculty Place of birth missing 1922 births 1991 deaths {{compu-bio-stub