Marvin Minsky: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

Marvin Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American mathematician who was Harvard- and Princeton-trained and used his training as a foundation for research in cognitive and computer science aspects of artificial intelligence (AI). After three years as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, Minsky joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1958 and spent the rest of his career at that institution. There, he co-founded MIT's AI laboratory, among other initiatives, and wrote extensively about AI and philosophy. He, computer scientist John McCarthy, and others have been considered "fathers of AI". At the time he was made emeritus, Minsky was the Toshiba Professor of Media Art & Sciences at MIT.

Minsky received many accolades and honors for his work, including the ACM Turing Award in 1969, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1982, the Japan Prize in 1990, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2001, and of the past-present-future trio of Dan David Prizes in 2014, the "Future"-oriented prize for "Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Mind". He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 1989, and was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI Hall of Fame for contributions to AI and intelligent systems in 2011.