Marvin Minsky

Marvin Minsky
Minsky in 2008
Born	Marvin Lee Minsky (1927-08-09)August 9, 1927 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	January 24, 2016(2016-01-24) (aged 88) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality	American
Fields	Cognitive science Computer science Artificial intelligence Philosophy of mind
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Alma mater	Phillips Academy Harvard University (B.A., 1950) Princeton University (Ph.D., 1954)
Thesis	Theory of Neural-Analog Reinforcement Systems and Its Application to the Brain Model Problem (1954)
Doctoral advisor	Albert W. Tucker
Doctoral students	James Robert Slagle Manuel Blum Daniel Bobrow Ivan Sutherland Bertram Raphael William A. Martin Joel Moses Warren Teitelman Patrick Winston Eugene Charniak Gerald Jay Sussman Scott Fahlman Benjamin Kuipers Luc Steels Danny Hillis K. Eric Drexler Carl Hewitt
Known for	Artificial intelligence Confocal microscope Useless machine Triadex Muse Transhumanism Perceptrons (book) The Society of Mind The Emotion Machine Frames
Influenced	David Waltz
Notable awards	Turing Award (1969) Japan Prize (1990) IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (1991) Benjamin Franklin Medal (2001) Computer History Museum Fellow (2006) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2013)
Website web.media.mit.edu/~minsky

Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts concerning AI and philosophy.

Marvin Lee Minsky was born in New York City, to an eye surgeon father, Henry, and to a mother, Fannie, who was an activist of Zionist affairs. His family was Jewish. He attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and the Bronx High School of Science. He later attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He then served in the US Navy from 1944 to 1945. He received a B.A. in mathematics from Harvard University (1950) and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University (1954).

He was on the MIT faculty from 1958 to his death. During 1959 he and John McCarthy initiated what is known now as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He was the Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

Minsky's inventions include the first head-mounted graphical display (1963) and the confocal microscope (1957, a predecessor to today's widely used confocal laser scanning microscope). He developed, with Seymour Papert, the first Logo "turtle". Minsky also built, during 1951, the first randomly wired neural network learning machine, .