Marvin Minsky was born in New York, New York, in 1927. He holds a BA from Harvard University (1949) and a PhD from Princeton University (1954), both in mathematics.
Minsky has been a leading figure in computer science since the 1950s. He is one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence (AI), and, with John McCarthy, established the MIT AI Lab in 1959 as a world center for research.
Throughout a career that has mirrored AI's general developments and posed some of its most difficult research questions, Minsky has left his imprint on generations of students and colleagues. His work has straddled computer science and psychology by applying computational concepts to the understanding of human psychological processes. This work has been widely influential, as have his parallel efforts in endowing machines with intelligence.
Minsky, who pioneered intelligence-based mechanical robotics and telepresence, designed some of the first mechanical hands with tactile sensors as well as visual scanners and their software and computer interfaces. He also is the inventor of the widely used confocal scanning microscope.
Among the honors he has received are the ACM Turing Award (1969), the Japan Prize (1990), and the Benjamin Franklin Medal (2001).
