John McCarthy *51

John McCarthy, the eminent computer scientist, died of heart disease Oct. 24, 2011. He was 84.

McCarthy graduated from Caltech in 1948, and in 1951 earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton. He then taught at Princeton, Stanford, Dartmouth, and MIT before returning to Stanford in 1962 as a professor of computer science. He became professor emeritus in 2000.

Regarded as the father of computer time-sharing, McCarthy also coined the term AI (for artificial intelligence). At MIT, he co- founded the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where a computer language was developed and became a standard tool for AI research and design. In 1964, McCarthy became the founding director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which has been prominent in the field.

Elliot Pinson ’56, a Caltech Ph.D. and retired Bell Labs director of computer systems research who took a math course taught by McCarthy at Princeton, remembers him “as just about the smartest guy I ever met.” McCarthy received the Turing Award (1971), the Kyoto Prize (1988), and the National Medal of Science (1990).

McCarthy is survived by his third wife, Carolyn; their son; two daughters from his first marriage; and two grandchildren. His second wife died climbing in the Himalayas.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.