John McCarthy

John McCarthy (1927–2011) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, engineer, and university teacher. Born in Boston and educated at the California Institute of Technology and Princeton University, he worked at Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University. His field of work included artificial intelligence, and he participated in the Dartmouth workshop. He was an atheist and served in the United States Army.

McCarthy received the Turing Award, Benjamin Franklin Medal, National Medal of Science, and Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and Association for Computing Machinery. His doctoral advisor was Donald C. Spencer, and his students included Raj Reddy, Barbara Liskov, Ruzena Bajcsy, and Hans Moravec. His archives are held at the Computer History Museum.