Herbert A. Simon
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031243
Today is the birthday of Herbert A. Simon, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1916. He was a social scientist who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Economics. His interest in the workings of the human mind led him to wonder whether a computer could simulate that thinking. In December 1955 he teamed with Allen Newell and J.C. Shaw to create Logic Theorist, a computer program that could discover proofs of geometric theorems. It was the first successful artificial intelligence program. “Over the Christmas holiday, Allen Newell and I invented a machine that thinks,” he told his students. Another groundbreaking AI program, General Problem Solver, soon followed. He was awarded the ACM Turing Award and the National Medal of Science.
Date in History: 15 June 1916
