Herbert A. Simon

Achievement

Biography

Chronology

1916 June 15, Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

1936 Received his BA from Chicago University

1937 Marries Dorothea Pye.

1942 Illinois Institute of Technology

his first child Katherine

his second child Peter A.

his third child Barbara M.

1943 received his PhD from the University of Chicago in political science.

1949 Mmember of the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University.

1955 In collaboration with Al Newell, succeeded in writing a computer program that could prove mathematical theorems.

A "famous" quotation

In a 1957 paper Professor Simon stated that within 10 years "a digital computer will be the world's chess champion unless the rules bar it from competition," while within the "visible future," he said, "machines that think, that learn and that create" will be able to handle challenges "coextensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied."

The IBM computer Deep Blue did finally beat the world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997 — about three decades after Mr. Simon had predicted the event would occur.

Honors and awards

1975 A. M. Turing Award for his work on computer science.

1978 Nobel in economics in 1978 for a new theory of decision making, hinting towards artificial intelligence that mirrors human thinking.

1986 Received the National Medal of Science.

1993 Awarded by the American Psychological Association for outstanding lifetime contributions to psychology.

1994 Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

1995 Awarded by the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence.

1995 The Dwight Waldo Award by the American Society of Public Administration.

Inducted into the Automation Hall of Fame because of his pioneering work in the field of artificial intelligence.

He received major national awards from the Association for Computing Machinery,

the American Political Science Association,

the Academy of Management,

the Operations Research Society

and the Institute of Management Science

Some 24 colleges and universities presented Simon with honorary doctor's degrees.

Bibliography

1977 Models of Bounded Rationality

1996 Sciences of the Artificial

1997 Administrative Behavior

Human Problem Solving, jointly with Allen Newell;

Scientific Discovery, with Pat Langley, Gary Bradshaw, and Jan Zytkow;

Models of Thought;

Models of Discovery;

Models of My Life. (autobiography)