John Mccarthy

John McCarthy, who died last week at the age of 84, was one of the true giants of computer science. Most remarkable about his contributions are their diversity, their depth, and how they span both theory and practice. To talk about him it is necessary first to dispel an unjustly negative connotation. McCarthy was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence, its most forceful advocate and the inventor of its very name. In the "AI Winter" episode of the late 1970s and 1980s, that name suffered some disrepute as a result of a scathing report by James Lighthill blaming AI researchers for over-promising.