Judea Pearl

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Judea Pearl
Born 1936 (age 76–77)
Tel Aviv, British Mandate for Palestine (present-day Israel)
Nationality Israeli
American
Fields Computer Science
Statistics
Alma mater Technion, Israel
Rutgers University, U.S.
Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, U.S.
Thesis Vortex Theory of Superconductive Memories (1965)
Doctoral advisor L. Strauss
L. Bergstein
Known for Artificial Intelligence
Causality
Bayesian Networks
Spouse Ruth
Website
http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html

Judea Pearl (born 1936) is an Israeli American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief propagation). He is also credited for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models (see article on causality). He is the 2011 winner of the ACM Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning".[1][2]

Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by militants in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front in 2002 for his being American and Jewish.[3][4]

Contents

Biography [edit]

Judea Pearl was born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate for Palestine, in 1936 and received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion in 1960. In 1960 he came to the United States and received a masters degree in Physics from Rutgers University, U.S. and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, U.S., in 1965. He worked at RCA Research Laboratories on superconductive parametric and storage devices and at Electronic Memories, Inc., on advanced memory systems. He then joined UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1970, where he is currently a professor of computer science and statistics and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory. He and his wife, Ruth, had three children. In addition, as of 2011, he is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.[5]

Murder of Daniel Pearl [edit]

In 2002, his son, Daniel Pearl, a journalist working for the Wall Street Journal was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, leading Judea and the other members of the family and friends to create the Daniel Pearl Foundation.[6] On the seventh anniversary of Daniel's death, Judea wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?.[7]

Research [edit]

Judea Pearl was one of the pioneers of Bayesian networks and the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence, and one of the first to mathematize causal modeling in the empirical sciences. His work is also intended as a high-level cognitive model. He is interested in the philosophy of science, knowledge representation, nonstandard logics, and learning. Pearl is described as "one of the giants in the field of artificial intelligence” by UCLA computer science professor Richard Korf.[8] His work on causality has "revolutionized the understanding of causality in statistics, psychology, medicine and the social sciences" according to the Association for Computing Machinery.[9]

Notable contributions [edit]

  • A summary of Pearl's scientific contributions is available in a chronological account authored by Stuart Russell (2012).
  • An annotated bibliography of Pearl's contributions was compiled by the ACM in 2012.

Books [edit]

Scientific papers [edit]

Lectures [edit]

Awards [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b Judea Pearl – A. M. Turing Award winner, ACM, retrieved 2012-03-14.
  2. ^ a b Gold, Virginia (March 15, 2012). "Judea Pearl Wins ACM A.M. Turing Award for Contributions that Transformed Artificial Intelligence". The Association for Computing Machinery. Archived from the original on March 15, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012. "ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery today named Judea Pearl of the University of California, Los Angeles the winner of the 2011 ACM A.M. Turing Award for innovations that enabled remarkable advances in the partnership between humans and machines that is the foundation of Artificial Intelligence (AI)." 
  3. ^ Fonda, Daren (September 27, 2003). "On the Trail of Daniel Pearl". TIME. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 
  4. ^ Escobar, Pepe (June 28, 2003). "Who killed Daniel Pearl?". Book Review. Asia Times Online. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 
  5. ^ "International Advisory Board Profiles". NGO Monitor. 2011. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 
  6. ^ "Biography of Dr. Judea Pearl". Daniel Pearl Foundation. 2011. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 
  7. ^ Pearl, Judea (February 3, 2009). "Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil". The Wall Street Journal. p. A15. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 
  8. ^ Amundson, Marlys (Fall 2004). "A Profile of Judea Pearl – Computer Science Pioneer,Visionary" (PDF). UCLA Engineer (UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science) (12): 16–17. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 
  9. ^ "ACM HONORS INNOVATORS WHO CHANGED THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD". New York: Association for Computing Machinery. April 27, 2004. Retrieved July 20, 2011. 
  10. ^ "AI's Hall of Fame". IEEE Intelligent Systems (IEEE Computer Society) 26 (4): 5–15. 2011. doi:10.1109/MIS.2011.64.  edit
  11. ^ "IEEE Computer Society Magazine Honors Artificial Intelligence Leaders". DigitalJournal.com. August 24, 2011 (2011-08-24). Retrieved September 18, 2011 (2011-09-18).  Press release source: PRWeb (Vocus).

External links [edit]

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