# John McCarthy John McCarthy (1927–2011) was an American computer scientist who coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955 and organized the seminal 1956 Dartmouth Conference that founded the field. He invented the Lisp programming language (1958), which became the dominant language for AI research for decades. McCarthy received the ACM Turing Award in 1971 for his contributions to AI. Beyond naming and founding AI, McCarthy made fundamental contributions to computer science: he pioneered time-sharing systems (allowing multiple users to share a computer), developed the concept of garbage collection, and contributed to the theory of computation. At Stanford, he founded the Stanford AI Laboratory (SAIL), which became one of the world's leading AI research centers. His 1959 paper "Programs with Common Sense" introduced the idea of commonsense reasoning for AI. ## Key Contributions | Contribution | Year | Description | |--------------|------|-------------| | **"Artificial Intelligence"** | 1955 | Coined the term | | **Dartmouth Conference** | 1956 | Organized founding AI workshop | | **Lisp** | 1958 | Created influential programming language | | **Time-sharing** | 1959 | Pioneered multi-user computing | | **Garbage collection** | 1959 | Automatic memory management | | **SAIL** | 1962 | Founded Stanford AI Lab | | **Circumscription** | 1980 | Non-monotonic reasoning formalism | ## Lisp McCarthy's Lisp (LISt Processing) introduced: - **S-expressions**: Code and data in same format - **Recursion**: First language designed around recursion - **Garbage collection**: Automatic memory management - **Dynamic typing**: Runtime type checking - **REPL**: Interactive development Lisp influenced virtually all modern programming languages. ## AI Philosophy McCarthy advocated for: - **Symbolic AI**: Intelligence through logical reasoning - **Commonsense reasoning**: AI needs everyday knowledge - **Mathematical logic**: Formal foundations for AI - **Machines as minds**: Computers can genuinely think ## Awards and Recognition - ACM Turing Award (1971) - Kyoto Prize (1988) - National Medal of Science (1990) - Benjamin Franklin Medal (2003) ## Career Timeline - **1927**: Born in Boston, Massachusetts - **1951**: Ph.D. in Mathematics, Princeton - **1955**: Coined "artificial intelligence" - **1956**: Organized Dartmouth Conference - **1958**: Created Lisp at MIT - **1962**: Joined Stanford, founded SAIL - **1971**: Turing Award - **2011**: Died in Stanford, California ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist) - http://jmc.stanford.edu - https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/mccarthy_1118322.cfm ## Related - [[Artificial Intelligence (AI)]] - [[Marvin Minsky]] - [[Allen Newell]] - [[Herbert Simon]]