Marvin L. Minsky *54

Marvin Minsky, the eminent computer-science professor at MIT who was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, died Jan. 24, 2016, of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 88.

Minsky served in the Navy (1944-45), before graduating from Harvard in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Then he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton in 1954. He was a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows before joining the MIT faculty in 1958.

In 1959, Minsky co-founded MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with John McCarthy *51 (who moved to Stanford in 1962).

Beyond the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory’s named purpose, it had a great effect on the emergence of the modern computer. It promoted the idea that digital information should be freely shared, and it was part of the ARPAnet, a precursor of the internet. Among the generations of graduate students he taught at MIT, many became giants in computer science, including his successor at the AI Lab.

Minsky’s many honors included: computer science’s highest prize, the Turing Award (1969); the Japan Prize (1990); and the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute (2001).

He is survived by his wife, Gloria Rudisch, a physician; three children; and four grandchildren.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.