Gerald Jay Sussman is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his S.B. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from MIT in 1968 and 1973, respectively. He has been involved in artificial intelligence research at MIT since 1964. His research has centered on understanding the problem-solving strategies used by scientists and engineers, with the goals of automating parts of the process and formalizing it to provide more effective methods of science and engineering education. Sussman has also worked in computer languages, in computer architecture and in VLSI design. This article treats electronics engineering as a subfield of electrical engineering, though this is not typical use in some areas. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a private research university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Its mission and culture are guided by an emphasis on teaching and research grounded in practical applications of science and technology. ... A Bachelor of Science (B.S., B.Sc. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... For other meanings of mathematics or math, see mathematics (disambiguation). ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... Hondas intelligent humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) of systems of transistor-based circuits into integrated circuits on a single chip first occurred in the 1980s as part of the semiconductor and communication technologies that were being developed. ...

Gerry Sussman appearing in a video recording of the SICP lectures.

Sussman is a coauthor (with Hal Abelson and Julie Sussman) of the introductory computer science textbook used at MIT. The textbook, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, has been translated into German, Polish, Chinese, French, Japanese, and Russian. As a result of this and other contributions to computer-science education, Sussman received the ACM's Karl Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award in 1990, and the Amar G. Bose award for teaching in 1991. Image File history File links Jerry_Sussman. ... Image File history File links Jerry_Sussman. ... Harold (Hal) Abelson is the Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the MIT, and a fellow of the IEEE. He holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a Ph. ... Front cover Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a textbook published in 1985 about general computer programming concepts from MIT press written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the worlds first scientific and educational computing society. ... This article is about the year. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Sussman's contributions to artificial intelligence include problem solving by debugging almost-right plans, propagation of constraints applied to electrical circuit analysis and synthesis, dependency-based explanation and dependency-based backtracking, and various language structures for expressing problem-solving strategies. Sussman and his former student, Guy L. Steele Jr., invented the Scheme programming language in 1975. Hondas intelligent humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. ... Scheme is a multi-paradigm programming language and a dialect of Lisp which supports functional and procedural programming. ... 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ...

Sussman saw that artificial intelligence ideas can be applied to computer-aided design. Sussman developed, with his graduate students, sophisticated computer-aided design tools for VLSI. Steele made the first Scheme chips in 1978. These ideas and the AI-based CAD technology to support them were further developed in the Scheme chips of 1979 and 1981. The technique and experience developed was then used to design other special-purpose computers. Sussman was the principal designer of the Digital Orrery, a machine designed to do high-precision integrations for orbital mechanics experiments. The Orrery was designed and built by a few people in a few months, using AI-based simulation and compilation tools. CAD redirects here. ... Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) of systems of transistor-based circuits into integrated circuits on a single chip first occurred in the 1980s as part of the semiconductor and communication technologies that were being developed. ... 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... This page refers to the year 1979. ... 1981 (MCMLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A digital system is one that uses discrete numbers, especially binary numbers, or non-numeric symbols such as letters or icons, for input, processing, transmission, storage, or display, rather than a continuous spectrum of values (an analog system). ... An orrery is a mechanical device that illustrates the relative positions and motions of the planets and moons in the solar system in heliocentric model. ... This article or section should be merged with Celestial Mechanics Astrodynamics is the study and creation of orbits, especially those of artificial satellites. ...

Using the Digital Orrery, Sussman has worked with Jack Wisdom to discover numerical evidence for chaotic motions in the outer planets. The Digital Orrery is now retired at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Sussman was also the lead designer of the Supercomputer Toolkit, another multiprocessor computer optimized for evolving systems of ordinary differential equations. The Supercomputer Toolkit was used by Sussman and Wisdom to confirm and extend the discoveries made with the Digital Orrery to include the entire planetary system. Jack Wisdom is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... The Smithsonian Institution Building or Castle on the National Mall serves as the Institutions headquarters. ... Multiprocessing is traditionally known as the use of multiple concurrent processes in a system as opposed to a single process at any one instant. ... In mathematics, and particularly in analysis, an ordinary differential equation (or ODE) is a relation that contains functions of only one independent variable, and one or more of its derivatives with respect to that variable. ...

Sussman has pioneered the use of computational descriptions to communicate methodological ideas in teaching subjects in Electrical Circuits and in Signals and Systems. Over the past decade Sussman and Wisdom have developed a subject that uses computational techniques to communicate a deeper understanding of advanced classical mechanics. In Computer Science: Reflections on the Field, Reflections from the Field, he writes "...computational algorithms are used to express the methods used in the analysis of dynamical phenomena. Expressing the methods in a computer language forces them to be unambiguous and computationally effective. Students are expected to read the programs and to extend them and to write new ones. The task of formulating a method as a computer-executable program and debugging that program is a powerful exercise in the learning process. Also, once formalized procedurally, a mathematical idea becomes a tool that can be used directly to compute results." Sussman and Wisdom, with Meinhard Mayer, have produced a textbook, Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics, to capture these new ideas. Classical mechanics is a branch of physics which studies the deterministic motion of objects. ... Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (SICM) is a textbook published in 2001 by MIT Press written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom. ...

Sussman is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is also on the board of directors of Free Software Foundation (FSF), a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a bonded locksmith, a life member of the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute (AWI), a member of the Massachusetts Watchmakers-Clockmakers Association, a member of the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston (ATMOB), and a member of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-e) is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. ... The Free Software Foundation logo The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the worlds first scientific and educational computing society. ... The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an organization that promotes cooperation between scientists, defends scientific freedom, encourages scientific responsibility and supports scientific education for the betterment of all humanity. ... New York Academy of Sciences is a society of some 20,000 scientists of all disciplines from 150 countries. ... The House of the Academy, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Locksmithing is the science and art of making and defeating locks. ... A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. ... 50 cm refracting telescope at Nice Observatory. ... The ARRL Logo. ...

See also

• Marvin Minsky
• Seymour Papert
• Terry Winograd
• Carl Hewitt
• Planner programming language

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Seymour Papert Seymour Papert (born March 1, 1928 Pretoria, South Africa) is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and prominent educator. ... Terry Allen Winograd (born February 24, 1946) is a professor of computer science at Stanford University. ... Carl E. Hewitt is an Associate Professor (Emeritus) in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). ... Planner (often seen in publications as PLANNER) is a programming language designed by Carl Hewitt at MIT, and first published in 1969. ...

External links

• Video clip of Sussman speaking at the International Conference on Complex Systems, hosted by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI)
• Sussman's homepage