Marvin Minsky

Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
	Minsky in 2008
Born	Marvin Lee Minsky; August 9, 1927; New York City, U.S.
Died	January 24, 2016 (aged 88); Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Education	Harvard University (BA); Princeton University (MA, PhD)
Known for	Artificial intelligence; Confocal microscope; Useless machine; Triadex Muse; Perceptrons; The Society of Mind; The Emotion Machine; Frames; SNARC; Dartmouth workshop;
Spouse	Gloria Rudisch (m. 1952)
Children	3
Awards	Turing Award (1969); Japan Prize (1990); AAAI Fellow (1990); IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (1991); Benjamin Franklin Medal (2001); BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2013);
	Scientific career
Fields	Cognitive science; Computer science; Artificial intelligence; Philosophy of mind;
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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; Adolfo Guzmán Arenas; Patrick Winston; Eugene Charniak; Gerald Jay Sussman; Scott Fahlman; Benjamin Kuipers; Luc Steels; Danny Hillis; K. Eric Drexler; Berthold K.P. Horn; Carl Hewitt; David Levitt;
Website	web.media.mit.edu/~minsky

Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory and wrote extensively about AI and philosophy.^[12]^[13]^[14]^[15]

Minsky received many accolades and honors, including the 1969 Turing Award. He is known as the "father of AI".^[16]

^ "Elected AAAI Fellows". www.aaai.org.
^ Marvin Lee Minsky at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
^ Marvin Lee Minsky at the AI Genealogy Project.
^ "Personal page for Marvin Minsky". web.media.mit.edu. Archived from the original on October 21, 2019. Retrieved June 23, 2016.
^ Minsky, Marvin (1961). "Steps toward Artificial Intelligence" (PDF). Proceedings of the IRE. 49: 8–30. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.79.7413. doi:10.1109/JRPROC.1961.287775. S2CID 14250548.
^ Minsky, Marvin (1988). "Memoir on inventing the confocal scanning microscope". Scanning. 10 (4): 128–138. doi:10.1002/sca.4950100403.
^ Pesta, A (March 12, 2014). "Looking for Something Useful to Do With Your Time? Don't Try This". WSJ. Retrieved March 24, 2014.
^ Hillis, Danny; McCarthy, John; Mitchell, Tom M.; Mueller, Erik T.; Riecken, Doug; Sloman, Aaron; Winston, Patrick Henry (2007). "In Honor of Marvin Minsky's Contributions on his 80th Birthday". AI Magazine. 28 (4): 109. doi:10.1609/aimag.v28i4.2064.
^ Papert, Seymour; Minsky, Marvin Lee (1988). Perceptrons: an introduction to computational geometry. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-63111-2.
^ Minsky, Marvin Lee (1986). The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-60740-1. The first comprehensive description of the Society of Mind theory of intellectual structure and development. See also The Society of Mind (CD-ROM version), Voyager, 1996.
^ Minsky, Marvin Lee (2007). The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-7664-1.
^ Marvin Minsky at DBLP Bibliography Server
^ Marvin Minsky publications indexed by Microsoft Academic
^ "Google Scholar". scholar.google.com.
^ Winston, Patrick Henry (2016). "Marvin L. Minsky (1927–2016)". Nature. 530 (7590): 282. Bibcode:2016Natur.530..282W. doi:10.1038/530282a. PMID 26887486.
^ Kuhn, Robert Lawrence (March 3, 2016). "Brains, Minds, AI, God: Marvin Minsky Thought Like No One Else (Tribute)". space.com. Retrieved September 7, 2025.

[1] "Elected AAAI Fellows". www.aaai.org.

[mathgene-2] Marvin Lee Minsky at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

[aigene-3] Marvin Lee Minsky at the AI Genealogy Project.

[4] "Personal page for Marvin Minsky". web.media.mit.edu. Archived from the original on October 21, 2019. Retrieved June 23, 2016.

[steps-5] Minsky, Marvin (1961). "Steps toward Artificial Intelligence" (PDF). Proceedings of the IRE. 49: 8–30. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.79.7413. doi:10.1109/JRPROC.1961.287775. S2CID 14250548.

[confocal-6] Minsky, Marvin (1988). "Memoir on inventing the confocal scanning microscope". Scanning. 10 (4): 128–138. doi:10.1002/sca.4950100403.

[Pesta-7] Pesta, A (March 12, 2014). "Looking for Something Useful to Do With Your Time? Don't Try This". WSJ. Retrieved March 24, 2014.

[8] Hillis, Danny; McCarthy, John; Mitchell, Tom M.; Mueller, Erik T.; Riecken, Doug; Sloman, Aaron; Winston, Patrick Henry (2007). "In Honor of Marvin Minsky's Contributions on his 80th Birthday". AI Magazine. 28 (4): 109. doi:10.1609/aimag.v28i4.2064.

[perceptrons-9] Papert, Seymour; Minsky, Marvin Lee (1988). Perceptrons: an introduction to computational geometry. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-63111-2.

[socmind-10] Minsky, Marvin Lee (1986). The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-60740-1. The first comprehensive description of the Society of Mind theory of intellectual structure and development. See also The Society of Mind (CD-ROM version), Voyager, 1996.

[emotion-11] Minsky, Marvin Lee (2007). The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-7664-1.

[dblp-12] Marvin Minsky at DBLP Bibliography Server

[microsoft-13] Marvin Minsky publications indexed by Microsoft Academic

[14] "Google Scholar". scholar.google.com.

[natureobit-15] Winston, Patrick Henry (2016). "Marvin L. Minsky (1927–2016)". Nature. 530 (7590): 282. Bibcode:2016Natur.530..282W. doi:10.1038/530282a. PMID 26887486.

[kuhn2016-16] Kuhn, Robert Lawrence (March 3, 2016). "Brains, Minds, AI, God: Marvin Minsky Thought Like No One Else (Tribute)". space.com. Retrieved September 7, 2025.

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