Oliver Selfridge | |
|---|---|
 Selfridge in 2008 | |
| Born | Oliver Gordon Selfridge (1926-05-10)May 10, 1926 London, England |
| Died | December 3, 2008(2008-12-03) (aged 82) |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS) |
| Known for | Pandemonium Architecture |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics,Computer science,Artificial Intelligence |
| Institutions | |
Oliver Gordon Selfridge (10 May 1926 – 3 December 2008) was a mathematician and computer scientist who pioneered the early foundations of modernartificial intelligence.[2] He is mostly known for his 1959 paper,Pandemonium: A paradigm for learning describing what's now known as thePandemonium Architecture. He has been called the "Father of Machine Perception."[3]
Selfridge, born in England, was a grandson ofHarry Gordon Selfridge,[2] the founder ofSelfridges department stores. His father was Harry Gordon Selfridge Jr. and his mother was a clerk at Selfridge's store. His parents had met, fallen in love, married and had children all in secret, and Oliver never met his grandfather, Harry Sr. He was educated atMalvern College, and, upon moving to the US, atMiddlesex School inConcord, Massachusetts, before earning anS.B. fromMIT in mathematics in 1945. He then became a graduate student ofNorbert Wiener atMIT, but did not write up his doctoral research and never earned a Ph.D.
Marvin Minsky considered Selfridge to be one of his mentors,[4] and Selfridge was one of the 11 attendees, withMinsky, of theDartmouth workshop that is considered the founding event ofartificial intelligence as a field.
Selfridge wrote important early papers onneural networks,pattern recognition, andmachine learning, and his "Pandemonium" paper (1959) is generally recognized as a classic inartificial intelligence. In it, Selfridge introduced the notion of "demons" that record events as they occur, recognize patterns in those events, and may trigger subsequent events according to patterns they recognize. Over time, this idea gave rise toaspect-oriented programming.
In 1968, in their formative paper "The Computer as a Communication Device",J. C. R. Licklider andRobert Taylor introduced a concept known as an OLIVER (On-Line Interactive Vicarious Expediter and Responder), which was named in honor of Selfridge.[5]
Selfridge spent his career atLincoln Laboratory,MIT (where he was Associate Director ofProject MAC),Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and GTE Laboratories where he became Chief Scientist. He served on theNSA Advisory Board for 20 years, chairing the Data Processing Panel. In 1991 he was elected a Fellow of theAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.[6] Selfridge retired in 1993.[7]
In 2015,Duncan Campbell identified Selfridge as his "best source" for Campbell's 1980 reporting on USNational Security Agency wiretapping activity atRAF Menwith Hill in England.[8] Campbell described this operation inNew Statesman as a "billion dollar phone tap".[9]
Selfridge also authored four children's books:Sticks,Fingers Come In Fives,All About Mud, andTrouble With Dragons.[10]
Selfridge was married and divorced twice and is survived by two daughters and two sons.[11]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
