Edward Feigenbaum

Edward Albert Feigenbaum (born January 20, 1936) is a computer scientist working in the field of artificial intelligence, and joint winner of the 1994 ACM Turing Award. He is often called the "father of expert systems".

Education and early life

Feigenbaum was born in Weehawken, New Jersey in 1936 to a culturally Jewish family, and moved to nearby North Bergen, where he lived until the age of 16, when he left to start college. Knuth, Don
"Oral History of Edward Feigenbaum''
Computer History Museum, 2007. Accessed October 23, 2015. "I was born in Weehawken, New Jersey, which is a town on the Palisades opposite New York. In fact, it’s the place where the Lincoln Tunnel dives under the water and comes up in New York. Then my parents moved up the Palisades four miles to a town called North Bergen, and there I lived until I was 16 and went off to Carnegie Tech." His hometown did not have a secondary school of its own, and so he chose Weehawken High School for its college preparatory program. He was inducted into his high school's hall of fame in 1996.

Feigenbaum completed his undergraduate degree (1956), and a Ph.D. (1960), at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). In his PhD thesis, carried out under the supervision of Herbert A. Simon, he developed EPAM, one of the first computer models of how people learn.

During undergrad years, he took a graduate-level course called "Ideas and Social Change" taught by James March. March introduced him to Herbert Simon. Feigenbaum took a course "Mathematical Models in the Social Sciences" taught by Simon, where Simon announced the Logic Theorist with "Over the Christmas holidays, Al Newell and I invented a thinking machine." Simon gave Feigenbaum a manual of IBM 701, which he read in one night. Feigenbaum later called it a "born-again experience".

Career and research

Feigenbaum completed a Fulbright fellowship at the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) and in 1960 went to the University of California, Berkeley, to teach in the School of Business Administration. He joined the Stanford University faculty in 1965 as one of the founders of its computer science department. He was the director of the Stanford Computation Center from 1965 to 1968. He established the Knowledge Systems Laboratory at Stanford University. Important projects that Feigenbaum was involved in include systems in medicine, as ACME, MYCIN, SUMEX, and Dendral. He also co-founded companies IntelliCorp and Teknowledge.

Teknowledge was founded in July 1981 by 20 computer scientists from Stanford University, MIT, and the Rand Corporation. The company's staff "represent about 1/3 of the world's high-level expertise in the design and development of knowledge systems". Its aim was to allow people without training in knowledge-engineering technology to use it for commercial and industrial applications.

In 2000, Feigenbaum became a Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University. His former doctoral students include Peter Karp, Niklaus Wirth, and Alon Halevy.

Honors and awards

* 1984: Selected as one of the initial fellows of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI)
* 1986: Elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for pioneering contributions to knowledge engineering and expert systems technology, and for leadership in education and technology of applied artificial intelligence.
* 1994: Turing Award jointly with Raj Reddy for "pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology".
* 1997: U.S. Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Award
* 2007: Inducted as fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
* 2011: IEEE Intelligent Systemsbr>AI's Hall of Fame
for "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".
* 2012. Made fellow of the Computer History Museum "for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence and expert systems."
* 2013. IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award for "pioneering work in Artificial Intelligence, including development of the basic principles and methods of knowledge-based systems and their practical applications".

Works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feigenbaum, Edward
1936 births
Living people
American artificial intelligence researchers
Turing Award laureates
20th-century American Jews
2007 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Carnegie Mellon University alumni
Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Chief Scientists of the United States Air Force
Stanford University School of Engineering faculty
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
People from North Bergen, New Jersey
People from Weehawken, New Jersey
Presidents of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Haas School of Business faculty
Weehawken High School alumni
21st-century American Jews