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Birth
He was Born on September 4, in Boston, Massachusetts. -
B.S degree received
He received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1948 from the California Institute of Technology. -
Ph.D. in Mathematics
John completed his doctoral studies in 1951 under Lefschetz, focusing on a challenge related to partial differential equations. His dissertation, titled "Projection Operators and Partial Differential Equations," culminated his Ph.D. research. -
"Artificial Intelligence "
In a Dartmouth Conference he published the “Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence." and created the term for the first time. -
Invented LISP
McCarthy's time at IBM was pivotal in shaping his vision for a novel programming language. This language needed to facilitate recursion and handle dynamic storage effectively. Recursion, a key feature in this context, allows a program to execute simpler iterations of itself. Upon his return to MIT in the fall of that year, McCarthy initiated the development of this new language, naming it "LISP" as an acronym for "list processor". [1] -
Invented Time-Sharing
He introduced the concept of timesharing, allowing multiple users to access a single computer simultaneously. This idea was realized in MIT's 1962 Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) and influenced later systems at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, and Stanford University. CTSS was instrumental in the development of Project MAC at MIT. While less necessary due to cheaper computers, timesharing principles are still used to run multiple programs for a single user at once. [1] -
Inveneted Cloud Computing
He proposed computing as a public utility, similar to telephones, where users pay for their usage. This concept, now known as cloud computing, took decades to develop. It resembles utility computing, with cloud computing likened to cluster or grid computing for high-performance tasks. [3] -
Founded Stanford AI
In 1962 he joined Stanford as a professor and founded the Stanford AI lab. -
AI Playing Chess
Between 1959 and 1962, MIT students led by McCarthy created a chess program, evolving from earlier IBM 704 versions by McCarthy. Alan Kotok, a team member, outlined the program in his MIT thesis. It played at an amateur level and incorporated McCarthy's alpha-beta procedure for improved search efficiency. This section includes John McCarthy's explanation of the procedure. -
Turing Award
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Developed The Circumscription
He then worked on implementing commonsense reasoning in a logical framework. This involved addressing the "qualification problem" and the "frame problem," which pertained to accurately representing preconditions and effects of actions. McCarthy, with Vladimir Lifschitz, developed a technique called "circumscription," facilitating non-monotonic reasoning—an approach to make reasonable guesses in logic. This work demonstrated the feasibility of the logicist agenda in AI. [4] -
Won The Kyoto Prize
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Won The National Medal of Science
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Invent the concept of a smart homes
[5] -
Published Making Robots Conscious of their Mental States
In 1995 to 2002, he worked on an important publication highlighting the need for robots to have introspective knowledge for human tasks, proposing a logical language for their self-awareness, and discussing the design of consciousness in artificial intelligence, challenging the necessity of human-like qualia for robotic behavior. [6] -
Published in Psychology
His article explored the concept that children are born with innate abilities, contrasting the idea of a 'blank slate.' It highlighted the evolutionary aspect of learning and discusses proposals from the 1950s about creating an AI 'child machine' that learns like a human child. [7] -
Died