Judea Pearl (; born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-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 ...

and

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to

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 ...

and the development of

Bayesian networks A Bayesian network (also known as a Bayes network, Bayes net, belief network, or decision network) is a probabilistic graphical model that represents a set of variables and their Conditional dependence, conditional dependencies via a directed a ...

(see the article on

belief propagation Belief propagation, also known as sum–product message passing, is a message-passing algorithm for performing inference on graphical models, such as Bayesian networks and Markov random fields. It calculates the marginal distribution for ea ...

). He is also credited for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models (see article on causality). In 2011, the

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 membe ...

(ACM) awarded Pearl with the

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning". He is the author of several books, including the technical '' Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference'', and '' The Book of Why'', a book on causality aimed at the general public. Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front in 2002.

Biography

Judea Pearl was born in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

, British Mandate for Palestine, in 1936 to Eliezer and Tova Pearl, who were Polish Jewish immigrants, grew up in

Bnei Brak Bnei Brak ( ) or Bene Beraq, is a city located on the central Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean Israeli coastal plain, coastal plain in Israel, just east of Tel Aviv. A center of Haredi Judaism, Bnei Brak covers an area of 709 hectares (1,752 acre ...

. His grandfather Chaim Pearl was one of Bnei Brak's founders. He is a descendant of Menachem Mendel of Kotzk on his mother's side. After serving in the

Israel Defense Forces The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and ...

and joining a

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

, Pearl decided to study engineering in 1956. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Technion 1960. That same year, he emigrated to the United States and pursued graduate studies. He received an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Newark College of Engineering (now

New Jersey Institute of Technology New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is a Public university, public research university in Newark, New Jersey, United States, with a graduate-degree-granting satellite campus in Jersey City. Founded in 1881 with the support of local indust ...

) in 1961, and went on to receive an M.S. in physics from

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

and a PhD in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the New York University Tandon School of Engineering) in 1965. He worked at RCA Research Laboratories (now

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is a nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. It was established in 1946 by trustees of Stanford Univer ...

) in

Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...

on superconductive parametric amplifiers and storage devices and at Electronic Memories, Inc., on advanced memory systems. When

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

s "wiped out" Pearl's work, as he later expressed it, he joined

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

's School of Engineering in 1970 and started work on probabilistic

. He is one of the founding editors of the ''Journal of Causal Inference''. Pearl is currently a professor of computer science and statistics and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at UCLA. He and his wife, Ruth, had three children. In addition, , he is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor. Former Israeli Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, partnered with Judea Pearl in the documentary ''With My Whole Broken Heart''.

Murder of Daniel Pearl

In 2002, his son, Daniel Pearl, a journalist working for the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' was kidnapped and murdered in

, leading Judea and the other members of the family and friends to create the Daniel Pearl Foundation. On the seventh anniversary of Daniel's death, Judea wrote an article in the ''Wall Street Journal'' titled ''Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?''. Emeritus

Chief Rabbi Chief Rabbi () is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities. Since 1911, through a capitulation by Ben-Zion Meir ...

Jonathan Sacks quoted Judea Pearl's beliefs in a lesson on

Judaism Judaism () is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, Monotheism, monotheistic, ethnic religion that comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jews, Jewish people. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of o ...

: "I asked Judea Pearl, father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, why he was working for reconciliation between Jews and Muslims...he replied with heartbreaking lucidity, 'Hate killed my son. Therefore I am determined to fight hate.'"

Views

On his religious views, Pearl states that he is a "practicing disbeliever." He is very connected to Jewish traditions such as holidays and kiddush on Friday night.

Research

Judea Pearl is credited for "laying the foundations of modern artificial intelligence, so computer systems can process uncertainty and relate causes to effects." He is one of the pioneers of

and the probabilistic approach to

, and one of the first to mathematize causal modeling in the empirical sciences. His work is also intended as a high-level

cognitive model A cognitive model is a representation of one or more cognitive processes in humans or other animals for the purposes of comprehension and prediction. There are many types of cognitive models, and they can range from box-and-arrow diagrams to a se ...

. He is interested in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

knowledge representation Knowledge representation (KR) aims to model information in a structured manner to formally represent it as knowledge in knowledge-based systems whereas knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, or KR²) also aims to understand, reason, and ...

, nonstandard logics, and learning. Pearl is described as "one of the giants in the field of artificial intelligence" by UCLA computer science professor Richard E. Korf. His work on causality has "revolutionized the understanding of causality in statistics, psychology, medicine and the social sciences" according to the

Notable contributions

* A summary of Pearl's scientific contributions is available in a chronologica
account
authored by Stuart J. Russell (2012). * A
annotated bibliography
of Pearl's contributions was compiled by the ACM in 2012. * A video describing Pearl's major contributions to AI is availabl
here
* Pearl's opinion pieces, touching on Jewish identity, the war on terrorism, and the Middle East conflict can be accesse
here

Books

* ''Heuristics'', Addison-Wesley, 1984 * ''Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems'', Morgan-Kaufmann, 1988 *
''I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl''
Jewish Lights, 2004. (Winner of a 2004

National Jewish Book Award The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1943, is an American organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature. The goal of the council, as stated on its website, is "to promote the reading, writing and publishing of qual ...

) * ''Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer'', (with Madelyn Glymour and Nicholas Jewell), Wiley, 2016. ** A previous survey
Causal inference in statistics: An overview
Statistics Surveys, 3:96–146, 2009. *

Awards

*Foreign Member of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

(2025)
Kampe De Feriet Award
from the Conference on Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty (IPMU) (2024)
Test of Time Award
from International Conference on Priciples of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (2023) * BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2021) *

Carnegie Corporation of New York The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world. Since its founding, the Carnegie Corporation has endowed or othe ...

as an honoree of the Great Immigrants Awards * Classic Paper Award, Artificial Intelligence Journa
AIJ Awards
(2020) * Honorary Fellow, Royal Statistical Societ
AI pioneer named Royal Statistical Society Honorary Fellow
(2020) * Fellow of the American Statistical Association. (2019) * Honorary Doctorate, Hebrew University of Jerusale

(2018) * Honorary Doctorate,

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

br>Judea Pearl receives honorary doctorate from Yale
(2018) * Edward A. Dickson Award, UCL
Judea Pearl Wins UCLA Edward A. Dickson Emeritus Professorship Award , CS
2018) * Ulf Grenander Prize, American Mathematical Societ
News from the AMS
(2018) * Sells Award for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement, Society for Multivariate Experimental Psycholog
Sells Award for Distinguished Multivariate Research , SMEP
(2016) * Fellow, ACMbr>Judea Pearl named Association for Computing Machinery Fellow
(2015) * Dickson Prize, Carnegie Mellon Universit
Pearl wins Dickson Prize from Carnegie Mellon
(2015) * Classic Paper Award, Artificial Intelligence Journa

(2015) * Honorary Doctorate, Carnegie Mellon Universit
Judea Pearl to receive honorary doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University
(2015) * Member,

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 ...

UCLA artificial intelligence pioneer elected to the National Academy of Sciences
2014) * Honorary Doctorate, Texas A&
Graduation - Honorary Degrees
(2014) * Lynford Lecture and Distinguished Alumni Award, NYU-Polytechni
Computer Scientist and Philosopher Judea Pearl Delivers 15th Annual Lynford Lecture on Science of Cause and Effect , NYU Tandon School of Engineering
(2013) * Medallion Lecture, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, JSM-201
Institute of Mathematical Statistics , Medallion Lecture: Judea Pearl
2013) * Special Issue honoring Judea Pearl, Cognitive Science Journa

(2013) * Association for Computing Machinery, ACM

, Association for Computing Machiner
Judea Pearl Wins 2011 ACM Turing Award
(2012) * Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Science
Judea Pearl
(2012) * Harvey Prize, Technion, Israel Institute of Technolog

(2012) * Fellow, Cognitive Science Societ
Fellows of the Society
(2011) * David E. Rumelhart Prize, Cognitive Science Societ
Rumelhart Prize
(2011) *

IEEE Intelligent Systems ''IEEE Intelligent Systems'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the IEEE Computer Society and sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), British Computer Society (BCS), and European As ...

' AI's Hall of Fame (2011) * Otis Dudley Duncan Memorial Lecture, American Sociological Society (2010) * Festschrift and symposium in honor of Judea Pear
TRIBUTE TO JUDEA PEARL
(2010) * Heuristics, Probability and Causality: A Tribute to Judea Pearl, R. Dechter, H. Geffner, and J.Y. Halpern (Eds.), College Publicatio

(2010) * Honorary Doctorate, Chapman Universit

(2008) * Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computers and Cognitive Science, The Franklin Institut

(2008) * Honorary Doctorate of Science, University of Toront

(2007) * Purpose Priz
Judea Pearl and Akbar Ahmed
(2006) * Classic Paper Award, AAA

(2006) * Allen Newell Award, Association for Computing Machiner
Judea Pearl
2004) * Pekeris Memorial Lecture, The Weizmann Institute of Scienc

(2003) * Corresponding Member, Spanish Academy of Engineering (2002) * Lakatos Award, The London School of Economics and Political Scienc

(2001) * Classic Paper Award, AAA
2000 AAAI CLASSIC PAPER AWARD
(2000) * IJCAI Research Excellence Award in Artificial Intelligence, International Joint Conference in Artificial Intelligenc

(1999) * UCLA 81st Faculty Research Lecture

(1996) * Member,

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

(NAE) (1995) * Fellow, American Association of Artificial Intelligence ( AAAI) (1990), * Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

) (1988), * RCA Laboratories Achievement Award (1965)

References

External links

*
Daniel Pearl Foundation
* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pearl, Judea American computer scientists Israeli computer scientists Israeli emigrants to the United States Artificial intelligence researchers 1936 births Living people Fellows of the IEEE Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2015 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Rumelhart Prize laureates Turing Award laureates Israeli philosophers Epistemologists Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent Israeli atheists American people of Polish-Jewish descent Scientists from California Jewish American scientists Jewish American atheists American atheists Jewish philosophers Rutgers University alumni Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty Scientists from Tel Aviv 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society Fellows of the American Statistical Association Lakatos Award winners Harvey Prize winners Mathematical statisticians Israeli Ashkenazi Jews Machine learning researchers The Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science laureates American founders Foreign members of the Royal Society