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McCarthy (John) Papers
SC0524
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Table of contents
Language of Material:
English
Contributing Institution:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives
Title: John McCarthy papers
Creator:
McCarthy, John, 1927-2011
Identifier/Call Number: SC0524
Identifier/Call Number: 12549
Physical Description:
51.25 Linear Feet
and 4577.28 megabytes
Date (inclusive): 1951-2012
Abstract: Correspondence, memos, reports, course
materials, newsletters, articles, reprints, computer manuals, and other materials pertaining
to McCarthy's research and his teaching at Stanford and MIT. Correspondents include Forest
Baskett, Donald Knuth, Serge Lang, Joshua Lederberg, Douglas Lenat, Donald Michie, Hans
Moravec, Zohar Manna, Aaron Sloman, and Masahiko Sato. Also included are correspondence,
reprints, programs, notes, and articles from his work with Russian computer scientists,
1958-78.
The materials are arranged by accession.
Immediate Source of Acquisition note
Gift of John McCarthy, 1995-2009; Susan McCarthy, 2012-2013.
This collection is open for research.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must
be submitted in writing to the Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford
University Libraries, Stanford, California 94304-6064. Consent is given on behalf of Special
Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply
permission from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright
owner, heir(s) or assigns. See:
http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of
digital files is restricted to research and educational purposes.
John McCarthy Papers (SC0524) Department of Special Collections and University Archives,
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.
Biographical/Historical Sketch
McCarthy was born on Sept. 4, 1927, in Boston. He earned his undergraduate degree from the
California Institute of Technology in 1948 and his PhD at Princeton in 1951, both in
mathematics. He was an instructor at Princeton from 1951 until 1953 when he came to Stanford
as an assistant professor. In 1955, he left for Dartmouth and then for MIT before returning
to Stanford for good in 1962 as a full professor of computer science.
During his remarkable career, McCarthy co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project
and what became the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab, serving as director at Stanford
from 1965 until 1980. He was named the first Charles M. Pigott Professor at the Stanford
School of Engineering in 1987, before stepping down in 1994. He retired Jan. 1, 2001.
McCarthy was a giant in the field of computer science and a seminal figure in the field of
artificial intelligence. While at Dartmouth in 1955, McCarthy authored a proposal for a
two-month, 10-person summer research conference on "artificial intelligence" – the first use
of the term in publication.
In proposing the conference, McCarthy wrote, "The study is to proceed on the basis of the
conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in
principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it." The
subsequent conference is considered a watershed moment in computer science.
In 1958, McCarthy invented the computer programming language LISP, the second oldest
programming language after FORTRAN. LISP is still used today and is the programming language
of choice for artificial intelligence.
McCarthy also developed the concept of computer time-sharing in the late 1950s and early
1960s, an advance that greatly improved the efficiency of distributed computing and predated
the era of cloud computing by decades.
In 1960, McCarthy authored a paper titled, "Programs with Common Sense," laying out the
principles of his programming philosophy and describing "a system which is to evolve
intelligence of human order."
McCarthy garnered attention in 1966 by hosting a series of four simultaneous computer chess
matches carried out via telegraph against rivals in Russia. The matches, played with two
pieces per side, lasted several months. McCarthy lost two of the matches and drew two. "They
clobbered us," recalled Earnest.
Chess and other board games, McCarthy would later say, were the "Drosophila of artificial
intelligence," a reference to the scientific name for fruit flies that are similarly
important in the study of genetics.
McCarthy would later develop the first "hand-eye" computer system in which a computer was
able to see real 3D blocks via a video camera and control a robotic arm to complete simple
stacking and arrangement exercises.
The Association of Computing Machinery honored McCarthy with the A. M. Turing Award in
1971, the highest recognition in computer science. He received the Kyoto Prize in 1988 and
the National Medal of Science in 1990, the nation's highest technical award. He was a member
of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
McCarthy died on October 24, 2011. He was survived by his third wife, Carolyn Talcott of
Stanford; two daughters, Susan McCarthy of San Francisco and Sarah McCarthy of Nevada City,
Calif.; a son, Timothy Talcott McCarthy of Stanford; a brother, Patrick, of Los Angeles; two
grandchildren, Kitty McCarthy of San Francisco and Joseph Gunther of New York City; and his
first wife, Martha Coyote. McCarthy's second wife, Vera Watson, died in 1978 in a
mountain-climbing accident attempting to scale Annapurna in Nepal.
Correspondence, memos, reports, course materials, newsletters, articles, reprints, computer
manuals, and other materials pertaining to McCarthy's research and his teaching at Stanford
and MIT. Correspondents include Forest Baskett, Donald Knuth, Serge Lang, Joshua Lederberg,
Douglas Lenat, Donald Michie, Hans Moravec, Zohar Manna, Aaron Sloman, and Masahiko Sato.
Also included are correspondence, reprints, programs, notes, and articles from his work with
Russian computer scientists, 1958-78.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
LISP (Computer program language)
Computer programming.
Artificial intelligence.
McCarthy, John, 1927-2011
Baskett, Forest.
Lang, Serge
Knuth, Donald Ervin, 1938-
Lederberg, Joshua
Lenat, Douglas B.
Stanford University. Computer Science Department.
Faculty
Manna, Zohar.
Sloman, Aaron.
Michie, Donald.
Sato, Masahiko
Moravec, Hans P.