NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Gerry Sussman

Gerald Jay Sussman is the Matsushita Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT). He received the S.B. and the Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the 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. Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with the study and application of electricity and electromagnetism. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a research institution and university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts directly across the Charles River from Bostons Back Bay district. ... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Mathematics Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about: Mathematics Look up Mathematics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikimedia Commons has more media related to: Mathematics Bogomolny, Alexander: Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles. ... 1968 was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... 1973 was a common year starting on Monday. ... Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i. ... 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to 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. ...

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 French, German, Polish, Chinese, and Japanese. 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. Harold (Hal) Abelson is Class of 1922 Professor Of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at 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. ... Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Computer Science Open Directory Project: Computer Science Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies Belief that title science in computer science is inappropriate Categories: Computer science | Academic disciplines ... The Association for Computing Machinery, or ACM, was founded in 1947 as the worlds first scientific and educational computing society. ... 1990 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1991 is 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. Artificial intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i. ... Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. ... Scheme is a functional programming language and a dialect of Lisp. ... 1975 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...

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. Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of a wide range of computer-based tools that assist engineers and architects in their design activities. ... 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 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... 1979 is a common year starting on Monday. ... 1981 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A digital system is one that uses discrete values rather than a continuous spectrum of values: compare analog. ... 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 castle The Smithsonian Institution is a museum complex with most of its facilities in Washington D.C.. It consists of 19 museums, 7 research centers and has 142 million items in its collections. ... 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 in particular analysis, an ordinary differential equation (or ODE) is an equation that involves the derivatives of an unknown function of one 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. In physics, Classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of study in the science of mechanics, which is concerned with the motions of bodies, and the forces that cause them. ... 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-ee) is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. ... Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in 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. ... The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an organization dedicated to scholarship and the advancement of learning, particularly in areas of political science. ... Locksmithing is the science and art of making and defeating locks. ... A watchmaker is one who primarily repairs watches, although historically this person also made watches. ... 50 cm refracting telescope at Nice Observatory. ... The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) was founded in May 1914 by Hiram Percy Maxim. ...