Edward Albert Feigenbaum (born January 20, 1936) is a computer scientist working in the field of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

, and joint winner of the 1994 ACM

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in comput ...

. He is often called the "father of expert systems."

Education and early life

Feigenbaum was born in

Weehawken, New Jersey Weehawken is a township in the northern part of Hudson County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is located largely on the Hudson Palisades overlooking the Hudson River. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 17,197.

in 1936 to a culturally

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family, and moved to nearby

North Bergen North Bergen is a township in the northern part of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the township had a total population of 63,361. The township was founded in 1843. It was much diminished in territory by ...

, where he lived until the age of 16, when he left to start college. Knuth, Don
"Oral History of Edward Feigenbaum''
Computer History Museum, 2007. Accessed October 23, 2015. "I was born in Weehawken, New Jersey, which is a town on the Palisades opposite New York. In fact, it’s the place where the Lincoln Tunnel dives under the water and comes up in New York. Then my parents moved up the Palisades four miles to a town called North Bergen, and there I lived until I was 16 and went off to Carnegie Tech." His hometown did not have a secondary school of its own, and so he chose

Weehawken High School Weehawken High School is a six-year comprehensive public high school that serves students in seventh through twelfth grade from Weehawken in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States, operating as part of the Weehawken School District. The sch ...

for its college preparatory program. He was inducted into his high school's hall of fame in 1996. Feigenbaum completed his undergraduate degree (1956), and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

(1960), at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). In his PhD thesis, carried out under the supervision of

Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...

, he developed

EPAM EPAM Systems, Inc. ("Effective Programming for America") is an American company that specializes in service development, digital platform engineering, and digital product design, operating out of Newtown, Pennsylvania. History Early years In ...

, one of the first computer models of how people learn.

Career and research

Feigenbaum completed a Fulbright Fellowship at the National Physics Laboratory and in 1960 went to the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, to teach in the School of Business Administration. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1965 as one of the founders of its computer science department. He was the director of the Stanford Computation Center from 1965 to 1968. He established the

Knowledge Systems Laboratory Knowledge Systems Laboratory (KSL) was an artificial intelligence research laboratory within the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University until 2007, located in the Gates Computer Science Building, Stanford. Work focused on knowledge ...

at Stanford University. Important projects that Feigenbaum was involved in include systems in medicine, as ACME, Mycin, SUMEX, and

Dendral Dendral was a project in artificial intelligence (AI) of the 1960s, and the computer software expert system that it produced. Its primary aim was to study hypothesis formation and discovery in science. For that, a specific task in science was chose ...

. He also co-founded companies IntelliCorp and Teknowledge. Since 2000 Feigenbaum is a

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

of Computer Science at Stanford University. His former doctoral students include

Peter Karp Peter Karp is an American roots-based folk and blues singer, songwriter, guitarist, and pianist. He resides in Leiper's Fork, Tennessee, United States. Early life and career Peter Karp was born in Leonia, New Jersey, United States, and lived i ...

Niklaus Wirth Niklaus Emil Wirth (born 15 February 1934) is a Swiss computer scientist. He has designed several programming languages, including Pascal, and pioneered several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984, he won the Turing Award, generally ...

, and Alon Halevy.

Honors and awards

* 1984: Selected as one of the initial fellows of the

American College of Medical Informatics The American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) is a college of elected fellows from the United States and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics. Initially incorporated in 1984, the o ...

(ACMI) * 1986: Elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

for pioneering contributions to knowledge engineering and expert systems technology, and for leadership in education and technology of applied artificial intelligence. * 1994:

jointly with

Raj Reddy Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy (born 13 June 1937) is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mello ...

for "pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology". * 1997: U.S. Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Award * 2007: Inducted as fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) * 2011:

IEEE Intelligent Systems ''IEEE Intelligent Systems'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the IEEE Computer Society and sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), British Computer Society (BCS), and European As ...

br>AI's Hall of Fame
for "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems". * 2012. Made fellow of the Computer History Museum "for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence and expert systems." * 2013.

IEEE Computer Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Computer Pioneer Award The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry. ...

for "pioneering work in Artificial Intelligence, including development of the basic principles and methods of knowledge-based systems and their practical applications".

Works

* * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feigenbaum, Edward 1936 births Living people Artificial intelligence researchers Turing Award laureates 20th-century American Jews Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Carnegie Mellon University alumni History of artificial intelligence Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Chief Scientists of the United States Air Force Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering People from North Bergen, New Jersey People from Weehawken, New Jersey Presidents of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Haas School of Business faculty Weehawken High School alumni 21st-century American Jews