One of the fundamental concepts in mathematics is that of transformation. The study of the unfolding over time of a physical process leads naturally to investigations of the effects of the repetition of a transformation, which is to say to the study of multistage processes. Much of classical and contemporary analysis stems from this source: iteration, ergodic theory, the theory of semigroups [1], the theory of branching processes [2], random transformations at fixed times and deterministic transformations at stochastic times [3, 4]. We wish to indicate still another direction of research, that of multistage decision processes. What happens when we allow a choice of the transformation to be employed at each time?

W. W. Bledsoe is a major figure in the evolution of the new scientific field artificial intelligence and one of the founding fathers of the related scientific field automated reasoning. At the time we write, Bledsoe is an active contributor to science and education at the University of Texas at Austin. We hope that our fondness for Bledsoe, whom we have known well for twenty-three years, has not clouded our assessment of his many achievements. We are certain that we have failed to treat adequately many aspects of Bledsoe's life prior to our first meeting him in 1966, and sadly fear that lack of space and lack of investigative effort cause us to omit quite a few interesting aspects of his career since then. We hope, however, that this short sketch of Bledsoe will please his friends and perhaps provide some useful information for a future biographer or historian of science.

Reprinted in Marvin Minsky (ed), Semantic Information Processing, pp. 354-402, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.

"Among the new languages for instructing computers is a remarkable one called LISP. The name comes from the first three letters of LIST and the first letter of PROCESSING. Not only is LISP a language for instructing computers but it is also a formal mathematical language, in the same way as elëmentary algebra when rigorously defined and used is a formal mathematical language.The LISP language and its implementation on the IBM 7090 computer were worked out by a group including John McCarthy, Stephen B. Russell , Daniel J. Edwards, Paul W. Abrahams, Timothy P. Hart, Michael I. Levin, Marvin L. Minsky, and others.LISP is designed primarily for processing data consisting of lists of symbols. It has been used for symbolic calculations in differential and integral calculus, electrical circuit theory, mathematical logic , game playing, and other fields of intelligent handling of symbols."Information International, Inc, Cambridge, Mass.

"It is well known to be impossible to tile with dominoes a checkerboard with two opposite corners deleted. This fact is readily stated in the first order predicate calculus, but the usual proof which involves a parity and counting argument does not readily translate into predicate calculus. We conjecture that this problem will be very difficult for programmed proof procedures."Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project Memo No. 16

'might do even better to make people change to some mor- "intelligent" language. We thus define "understazding" in terms of statements in English The Should the computer store 2he information contained in these statements? SAD SAM program written'by Robert Lindsay at Carnegie Tech in 1960. Mary?" or "Who are Jack's grandchildren?" SAD SAH extracts the meaning "Mary, Tom's sister, went to the meéting," "The sum of two numbers is 96, ané one of the numbers is 16 "One of the numbers is 56" I chose this problem coaaext for a number of reasons"?irst

Reprinted in Marvin Minsky (ed), Semantic Information Processing, pp. 354-402, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.

E.A. Feigenbaum and J. Feldman (Eds.). Computers and Thought. McGraw-Hill, 1963. This collection includes twenty classic papers by such pioneers as A. M. Turing and Marvin Minsky who were behind the pivotal advances in artificially simulating human thought processes with computers. All Parts are available as downloadable pdf files; most individual chapters are also available separately. COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE. A. M. Turing. CHESS-PLAYING PROGRAMS AND THE PROBLEM OF COMPLEXITY. Allen Newell, J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. SOME STUDIES IN MACHINE LEARNING USING THE GAME OF CHECKERS. A. L. Samuel. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS WITH THE LOGIC THEORY MACHINE: A CASE STUDY IN HEURISTICS. Allen Newell J.C. Shaw and H.A. Simon. REALIZATION OF A GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter. EMPIRICAL EXPLORATIONS OF THE GEOMETRY-THEOREM PROVING MACHINE. H. Gelernter, J.R. Hansen, and D. W. Loveland. SUMMARY OF A HEURISTIC LINE BALANCING PROCEDURE. Fred M. Tonge. A HEURISTIC PROGRAM THAT SOLVES SYMBOLIC INTEGRATION PROBLEMS IN FRESHMAN CALCULUS. James R. Slagle. BASEBALL: AN AUTOMATIC QUESTION ANSWERER. Green, Bert F. Jr., Alice K. Wolf, Carol Chomsky, and Kenneth Laughery. INFERENTIAL MEMORY AS THE BASIS OF MACHINES WHICH UNDERSTAND NATURAL LANGUAGE. Robert K. Lindsay. PATTERN RECOGNITION BY MACHINE. Oliver G. Selfridge and Ulric Neisser. A PATTERN-RECOGNITION PROGRAM THAT GENERATES, EVALUATES, AND ADJUSTS ITS OWN OPERATORS. Leonard Uhr and Charles Vossler. GPS, A PROGRAM THAT SIMULATES HUMAN THOUGHT. Allen Newell and H.A. Simon. THE SIMULATION OF VERBAL LEARNING BEHAVIOR. Edward A. Feigenbaum. PROGRAMMING A MODEL OF HUMAN CONCEPT FORMULATION. Earl B. Hunt and Carl I. Hovland. SIMULATION OF BEHAVIOR IN THE BINARY CHOICE EXPERIMENT Julian Feldman. A MODEL OF THE TRUST INVESTMENT PROCESS. Geoffrey P. E. Clarkson. A COMPUTER MODEL OF ELEMENTARY SOCIAL BEHAVIOR. John T. Gullahorn and Jeanne E. Gullahorn. TOWARD INTELLIGENT MACHINES. Paul Armer. STEPS TOWARD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky. A SELECTED DESCRIPTOR-INDEXED BIBLIOGRAPHY TO THE LITERATURE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Marvin Minsky.

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We wish to acknowledge the helpful suggestions and encouragement of Herbert Simon, Edward Feigenbaum, Julian Feldman, Frank Marzocco, and Charles Baker. Thanks are also due the Committee on Simulation of Cognitive Processes of the Social Science. Use the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues.