Jack Minker (4 July 1927 – 9 April 2021) was a leading authority in

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 re ...

deductive database A deductive database is a database system that can make deductions (i.e. conclude additional facts) based on rules and facts stored in the (deductive) database. Datalog is the language typically used to specify facts, rules and queries in deductiv ...

logic programming Logic programming is a programming paradigm which is largely based on formal logic. Any program written in a logic programming language is a set of sentences in logical form, expressing facts and rules about some problem domain. Major logic prog ...

and

non-monotonic reasoning A non-monotonic logic is a formal logic whose conclusion relation is not monotonic. In other words, non-monotonic logics are devised to capture and represent defeasible inferences (cf. defeasible reasoning), i.e., a kind of inference in which re ...

. He was also an internationally recognized leader in the field of human rights of computer scientists. He was an

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 ...

Professor in the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

Department of Computer Science, which is part of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.

Education and early life

Minker was born on July 4, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree from

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

in 1949,

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

degree from the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

in 1950, and PhD from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1959 for research supervised by Bernard Epstein.

Career and research

Minker started his career in industry in 1951, working at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, RCA, and the Auerbach Corporation. He joined the University of Maryland in 1967, becoming Professor of Computer Science in 1971 and the first chair of the department in 1974. He became Professor Emeritus in 1998. Minker was one of the founders of the area of deductive databases and disjunctive logic programming. He has made important contributions to semantic

query optimization Query optimization is a feature of many relational database management systems and other databases such as NoSQL and graph databases. The query optimizer attempts to determine the most efficient way to execute a given query by considering the pos ...

and to cooperative and informative answers for deductive databases. He has also developed a theoretical basis for disjunctive databases and disjunctive logic programs, developing the

Generalized Closed World Assumption The closed-world assumption (CWA), in a formal system of logic used for knowledge representation, is the presumption that a statement that is true is also known to be true. Therefore, conversely, what is not currently known to be true, is false. Th ...

(GCWA). Minker has over 150 refereed publications and has edited or co-edited five books on deductive databases, logic programming, and the use of logic in artificial intelligence. He was Founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal ''Theory and Practice of Logic Programming''. Minker has been Vice-Chairman of the Committee of Concerned Scientists since 1973, and Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights (CSFHR) of the Association for Computing Machinery from 1980 to 1989. He led the struggle for the release of

Anatoly Shcharansky Natan Sharansky ( he, נתן שרנסקי; russian: Ната́н Щара́нский; uk, Натан Щаранський, born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky on 20 January 1948); uk, Анатолій Борисович Щаранський, ...

and

Alexander Lerner Alexander Yakovlevich Lerner (russian: Александр Яковлевич Лернер; 7 September 1913, Vinnytsia, Russian Empire – 6 April 2004, Rehovot, Israel) was a scientist and Soviet refusenik. He was born to a Jewish family in Vinn ...

from the late Soviet Union. He also campaigned on behalf of

Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov ( rus, Андрей Дмитриевич Сахаров, p=ɐnˈdrʲej ˈdmʲitrʲɪjevʲɪtɕ ˈsaxərəf; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident, nobel laureate and activist for nu ...

and his wife,

Yelena Bonner Yelena Georgiyevna Bonner (russian: link=no, Елена Георгиевна Боннэр; 15 February 1923 – 18 June 2011) ...

. His memoir, ''Scientific Freedom & Human Rights: Scientists of Conscience During the Cold War'', was published in 2012 by IEEE Computer Society Press. His former doctoral students include

Terry Gaasterland Theresa Gaasterland is an American politician and scientist. She is a Professor of Computational Biology and Genomics and Director of the Scripps Genome Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She was elected a Fellow of the Int ...

Honors and awards

Minker was elected a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(AAAS) in 1989, founding Fellow of the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

(AAAI) in 1990, Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 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 ...

(IEEE) in 1991, and founding Fellow of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM) in 1994. He received the ACM Outstanding Contribution Award for his work on human rights in 1985, the ACM Recognition of Service Award in 1989, the University of Maryland President's Medal for 1996, and the prestigious ACM Allen Newell Award for 2005. The Allen Newell Award is a recognition by the Association for Computing Machinery to individuals that have contributed to the breadth of knowledge within computer science and the bridging between computer science and other disciplines. He also received the 2011 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights Award from the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...

for his work on behalf of scientific freedom and human rights for scientists.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Minker, Jack 1927 births 2021 deaths Scientists from Brooklyn Jewish American scientists Brooklyn College alumni Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence researchers Fellow Members of the IEEE Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery University of Maryland, College Park faculty 21st-century American Jews