Marvin Minsky

Marvin Lee Minsky founded the AI Lab in his first year at MIT. His contributions to society were many, including several books. His 1985 book “The Society of Mind” is considered a seminal exploration of intellectual structure and function, advancing understanding of the diversity of mechanisms interacting in intelligence and thought. Minsky’s last book, “The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind,” was published in 2006.

Marvin Lee Minsky was born in New York City. His father was an eye surgeon, and an interest in science and medicine was actively encouraged in the Minsky household. Minsky took advantage of his father’s library to read widely in the sciences. He was still a child when he read the works of Freud. He was also a precocious pianist. Music and psychology were to remain lifelong interests. Young Marvin was sent to the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, founded in 1878. In the words of its founder, Felix Adler, “The ideal of the school is not the adaptation of the individual to the existing social environment; it is to develop individuals who are competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals.” He earned admission to the Bronx High School of Science, a public high school with the greatest number of Nobel Prize winners of any secondary school in the world. He also studied at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts before he was called up for military service in World War II. Minsky served in the United States Navy from 1944 until the war’s end.

He then studied at Harvard and Princeton, before really finding his niche at MIT. There he founded the AI Lab & went on to do a lot of work in robotics. He was even inspired by science fiction, and was referenced in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Although at first the concepts of artificial intelligence remained the province of a small community of computer scientists, Minsky’s ideas, summarized in his 1967 book, Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines, gradually gained currency in the larger society. His peers recognized his achievement in 1969 with the Turing Award, named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the highest honor conferred by computer scientists on one of their own. Dr. Minsky had become a legend in the AI community, his name referenced in popular books and films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Minsky received many accolades and achievement awards in his life. He passed away in 2016 at age 88. He was survived by his physician wife, Dr. Gloria Rudisch, three children and four grandchildren. As intelligent devices proliferate in our homes, and driverless cars roll onto our highways, it appears that AI will play an ever greater role in our lives, thanks to the insights and ingenuity of Marvin Minsky.