Remembering Nils Nilsson

Nils Nilsson and Sven Wahlstrom pictured with Shakey, the first humanoid. This is Nils Nilsson calling!!" Or so the booming voice on the other end of the line claimed, as I skeptically held the phone in my hand on a Sunday afternoon mid-way through my final semester as an undergraduate in Toronto. I had been in my dorm room preparing for a mid-term in my Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course, in fact reading through the textbook which Nils himself had authored. I was certain the call was a prank perpetrated by a classmate who knew I was anxiously awaiting word on whether I would be accepted to the PhD program at Stanford. But it turned out to be legitimate: Nils had recently taken on the role as Chair of the Computer Science department at Stanford and decided that he wanted to call all of the applicants that had been offered admission.