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Birth
Born in New York City -
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US Navy
Joined the Navy near the end of WWII -
Graduated Harvard
Minsky graduated Harvard with a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics at the age of 23 -
Neural Network Simulator
Minsky Created his first Neural Network Simulator while a grad student at Princeton. -
Ultimate Machine
While a grad student he designed a machine that had the sole purpose of turning off a switch after someone turned it on. -
Graduated Princeton
Graduated with a Ph.D in Mathematics from Princeton University -
Invention: Confocal Scanning Microscope
After graduating from Princeton, Minsky joined the society of fellows at Harvard where he created the confocal scanning microscope. The confocal scanning microscope was an improvement from the common fluorescence microscope of the time. It gave scientists a clearer image of the object they were looking at. -
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MIT Faculty
After being hired on in 1958 to work in the MIT Lincoln Laboratory he continued to be apart of the MIT community and faculty until he died. He was a faculty member for almost 60 years! -
Creation of the Artificial Intelligence Project
Along with John McCarthy, Minsky helped create the Artificial Intelligence project that became an icon in the early years of artificial intelligence. Many projects in AI were done through this lab which are mentioned in the book "Hackers: Heros of the Computer Revolution" -
Awarded the Turing Award
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Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry
Minsky co-wrote this book with Seymour Papert. It was one well discussed in the 1970's and caused some controversy it computer logic and neural networks -
Society of Mind
In 1985, Minsky wrote the Society of the mind which he described people's minds like a bunch of "agents" controlling different actions. Kind of like the movie "Inside Out" -
Japan Award
An award given by Japan to those with outstanding work in Science -
Benjamin Franklin Medal
Awarded by the Franklin institute for his contributions in Computer and Cognitive Sciences -
The Emotions Machine
Minsky wrote the Emotions Machines to discuss and criticize popular emotional theories and propose some as well. -
Death
Marvin Minsky died at 88 due to a brain hemorrhage. There have been rumors that his body has been cryogenically preserved.
