Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 - July 19, 1992) was a researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND corporation and at Carnegie-Mellon’s School of Computer Science. He contributed to the Information Processing Language (1956) and two of the earliest AI programs, the Logic Theory Machine (1956) and the General Problem Solver (1957) (with Herbert Simon). March 19 is the 78th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (79th in leap years). ... 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... July 19 is the 200th day (201st in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 165 days remaining. ... 1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Computer Science Open Directory Project: Computer Science Downloadable Science and Computer Science books Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies Belief that title science in computer science is inappropriate Categories: | ... Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behavior. ... The RAND Corporation is an American think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the U.S. military. ... Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Computer Science Open Directory Project: Computer Science Downloadable Science and Computer Science books Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies Belief that title science in computer science is inappropriate Categories: | ... Information Processing Language (IPL) was a programming language developed by Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herbert Simon at RAND Corporation and the Carnegie Institute of Technology from about 1956. ... Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as intelligence exhibited by an artificial entity. ... This article needs cleanup. ... Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was a researcher in the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, public administration, economics and philosophy (sometimes described as a polymath). ...

SOAR is an attempt to realize some of the considerations from Newell's plea for a unified theory of cognition, titled, “You can’t play twenty questions with nature and win,” (1973). There exist other cognitive architectures in this vein, in particular, John Anderson’s ACT theory, which has become a widely popular unified architecture, successfully employed by cognitive scientists today to model human behavior in a wide range of tasks. SOAR (also spelled Soar) is a symbolic cognitive architecture, created by John Laird, Allen Newell, and Paul Rosenbloom at Carnegie Mellon University. ... Unified theories of cognition is a book written by Allen Newell in 1987. ... A cognitive architecture is a (artificial) computational process that acts like a certain cognitive system, most often, like a person, or acts intelligent under some definition. ... Rendering of human brain based on MRI data Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence (e. ... In cognition, a model is a simplified representation of reality. ...

He was awarded the ACM's A.M. Turing Award along with Herbert Simon in 1975 for In joint scientific efforts extending over twenty years, initially in collaboration with J. C. Shaw at the RAND Corporation, and subsequently with numerous faculty and student colleagues at Carnegie-Mellon University, they have made basic contributions to artificial intelligence, the psychology of human cognition, and list processing. The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the worlds first scientific and educational computing society. ... The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was a researcher in the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, public administration, economics and philosophy (sometimes described as a polymath). ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ... Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ...

The story

Newell was a graduate student at Princeton during 1949-1950 when he studied mathematics. Due to the exposure to a new field known as game theory and the experiences from the study of mathematics, he was convinced that he would prefer "a combination of experimental and theoretical research to pure mathematics" (Simon). Soon after, he left Princeton and joined the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica where he worked for "a group that was studying logistics problems of the Air Force" (Simon). His work with Joseph Kruskal led to the creation of two theories: A Model for Organization Theory and Formulating Precise Concepts in Organization Theory. Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that studies strategic situations where players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns. ... The RAND Corporation is an American think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the U.S. military. ... Joseph Bernard Kruskal (b. ...

Afterwards, Newell "turned to the design and conduct of laboratory experiments on decision making in small groups" (Simon). However, he ran into a problem. He was dissatisfied with the small-group experiments because of his disbelief, which was that the small experiments performed by the group were not good enough to provide accurate and good results. He joined with fellow RAND teammates John Kennedy, Bob Chapman, and Bill Biel at an Air Force Early Warning Station to perform a full-scale simulation “to study the organizational processes of the crews” and received funds from the Air Force in 1952 (Simon). The focus of the experiment was to examine and analyze the interactions between the crew members, the crew members and their radar screens, and with an interception aircraft, which were all processes of decision-making and information-handling. From this experiment, he came to believe that information processing is the central activity in organizations.

In the September of 1954, Newell enrolled in a seminar where Oliver Selfridge "described a running computer program that learned to recognize letters and other patterns" (Simon). This was when Allen came to believe that systems may be created and contain intelligence and have the ability to adapt. With this in mind, Allen, after a couple months, wrote in 1955 The Chess Machine: An Example of Dealing with a Complex Task by Adaptation, which "outlined an imaginative design for a computer program to play chess in humanoid fashion" (Simon). Oliver Selfridge, grandson of the founder of Selfridges department stores, has been called the Father of Machine Perception. ...

Honors

• 1971 - John Danz Lecturer, University of Washington
• 1971 - Harry Goode Memorial Award, American Federation of Information Processing Societies
• 1972 - National Academy of Sciences
• 1972 - American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1975 - A. M. Turing Award (with H. A. Simon), Association for Computing Machinery
• 1976-77 - John Simon Guggenheim Fellow
• 1979 - Alexander C. Williams Jr. Award (with William C. Biel, Robert Chapman and John L. Kennedy), Human Factors Society
• 1980 - National Academy of Engineering
• 1980 - First President, American Association for Artificial Intelligence
• 1982 - Computer Pioneer Award, Charter Recipient, IEEE Computer Society
• 1985 - Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, American Psychological Association
• 1986 - Doctor of Science (Honorary), University of Pennsylvania
• 1987 - William James Lectures, Harvard University
• 1989 - Award for Research Excellence, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
• 1989 - Doctor in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (Honorary), University of Groningen, The Netherlands
• 1989 - William James Fellow Award (charter recipient), American Psychological Society
• 1990 - Emanuel R. Piore Award, Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers
• 1992 - National Medal of Science
• 1992 - Franklin Institute’s Louis E. Levy Medal

Reference

• Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences
• Publications by Allen Newell from Interaction-Design.org