John McCarthy: Visionary Pioneer of Artificial Intelligence and Creator of Lisp

John McCarthy (September 4, 1927 – October 24, 2011) was an American computer and cognitive scientist, widely regarded as one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence (AI). He coined the term "artificial intelligence," developed the Lisp programming language, and made profound contributions to the theory of computation, earning him the Turing Award in 1971.

Early Life and Education

McCarthy was born in Boston to an Irish immigrant father and a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant mother. He earned his Bachelor's degree in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1948 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University in 1951, under the guidance of Donald C. Spencer .
His family moved frequently during the Great Depression, eventually settling in Los Angeles. His father was an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, and his mother was a social worker. McCarthy was briefly a member of the Communist Party in his youth but later left (ACM Turing Award).

Career and Research

McCarthy's career included several significant positions: Lecturer at Princeton University (1953-1955), Professor at Dartmouth College (1955-1958), Researcher at MIT (1958-1962), where he contributed to the development of time-sharing systems, and Professor at Stanford University (1962-2000), where he founded the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL). His contributions include: organizing the Dartmouth Conference in 1955, which marked the birth of AI as an independent field; developing the Lisp programming language, which became a standard in AI research; promoting the concept of time-sharing; inventing garbage collection; and proposing the Circumscription method for non-monotonic reasoning .

Interestingly, in his later years, McCarthy actively participated in Usenet discussions, sharing his views on global affairs, reflecting his passion for public discourse.

Awards and Honors

McCarthy's achievements include:

• 1971 Turing Award (for his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation)
• 1985 Computer Pioneer Award (IEEE)
• 1985 IJCAI Award for Research Excellence
• 1988 Kyoto Prize1990 National Medal of Science
• 2003 Benjamin Franklin Medal (for the development of Lisp)