Saul Amarel (1928 – December 18, 2002) was a professor of computer science at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

, and best known for his pioneering work 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 r ...

(AI). He also had a career as a

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

, and

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...

. He was a contributor to advanced computing and AI methodologies, both applied to scientific inquiry as well as engineering practice.

Biography

Amarel was born into a

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

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 in 1928. He served in the Greek Resistance movement during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

as the

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invaded Greece. He was forced to flee with his family to Gaza, which was then in British Palestine. Amarel graduated from

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology ( he, הטכניון – מכון טכנולוגי לישראל) is a public research university located in Haifa, Israel. Established in 1912 under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, the Technion ...

in 1948 with a bachelor's degree in engineering and worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense before heading to the United States. There he obtained his master's degree in 1953 and then a doctorate in Electrical Engineering in 1955 from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in New York. From 1958 to 1969, Amarel led the Computer Theory Research Group at RCA Sarnoff Labs. In 1969, Amarel founded the Department of

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

Livingston College From 1969 to 2007 Livingston College was one of the residential colleges that comprised Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey's undergraduate liberal arts programs. It was located on Livingston Campus (originally Kilmer) in Piscataway, N ...

, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. From 1985 to 1988, Amarel served as Director of the Information Sciences and Technology Office for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In 1988, Amarel returned to Rutgers and was appointed the Alan M. Turing Professor of Computer Science, pioneering research in the field of AI. Amarel received the Allen Newell Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his wide-ranging contributions to Artificial Intelligence, especially in advancing our understanding of the role of representation in problem solving, and of the theory and practice of computational planning. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1994. Amarel lived in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

, where he died in 2002 from a heart attack following a six-year battle with cancer.Nagourney, Saul
"Saul Amarel, 74, an Innovator In the Artificial Intelligence Field"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', December 21, 2002. Accessed November 24, 2007. This occurred just as the celebration of his retirement from Rutgers University, after more than 40 years of leadership in computer science nationally and internationally, was under preparation for December 20, 2002.

References

External links

AI ArticleArticle from Smart ComputingOral history interview with Saul Amarel

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. {{DEFAULTSORT:Amarel, Saul 1928 births 2002 deaths Greek Jews Greek people of World War II Greek Resistance members Jews from Thessaloniki Greek emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Israeli emigrants to the United States American people of Greek-Jewish descent Rutgers University faculty Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Jewish American scientists People from Princeton, New Jersey Israeli people of Greek-Jewish descent 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews