Marvin Minsky is perhaps most widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost pioneers of Artificial Intelligence. He is the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at M.I.T. His research has led to advances in Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics and Psychology. He built the first neural network learning machine; the first Confocal Scanning Microscope, an optical instrument with unprecedented resolution and image quality; and has been a pioneer in robotics and telepresence. Later contributions were made in graphics, symbolic mathematical computation, knowledge representation, computational semantics, machine perception, and both symbolic and connectionist learning. In 1985, he published "The Society of Mind," a book in which 270 interconnected one-page ideas reflect the structure of the theory itself. In 2006, Minsky published the sequel, The Emotion Machine.
Career stops: The Fieldston School, New York; Bronx High School of Science; Phillips Academy; US Navy, 1944-45; Harvard University; Princeton University; Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows; Professor of Mathematics, MIT; Founder, MIT Artificial Intelligence Project; Professor of EE, MIT.
Honors: Turing Award; Killian Award; Japan Prize; Rank Prize, Royal Society of Medicine; R.W. Wood Prize, Optical Society of America; Benjamin Franklin Medal; In Praise of Reason Award, World Skeptics Congress; President, American Association for Artificial Intelligence; Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, IEEE, Walt Disney Imagineering. Board of Advisors, National Dance Institute, National Space Society, American Academy of Achievement. Member, U.S. National Academy of Engineering, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Argentine National Academy of Science, League for Programming Freedom.
