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John McCarthy (1927 - 2011) — Parallax Forums

John McCarthy (1927 - 2011)

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi) Posts: 23,514
edited 2011-10-25 07:48 in General Discussion
Another giant of the EE/CS fields has passed on -- the creator of Lisp and putative father of AI:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/creator-of-lisp-john-mccarthy-dead-at-84/

-Phil

Comments

  • RossHRossH Posts: 5,519
    edited 2011-10-25 02:37
    Ah, how sad - another one bites the dust. Makes me start to feel old!

    Ross.
  • Martin_HMartin_H Posts: 4,051
    edited 2011-10-25 06:21
    Indeed another giant in the field. As an aside, I've read that John McCarthy only intended to create a syntax to describe Alonzo Church's lambda calculus, and not specify a programming language. He was in fact surprised when Steve Russell actually implemented it. But the strong theoretical underpinnings of Lisp are the reason for its staying power.
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2011-10-25 07:48
    It's really sad these great people must pass away. We must get together sometime and do something about it.
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