John McCarthy, born on September 4, 1927, in Boston, Massachusetts, is celebrated as one of the founding fathers of Artificial Intelligence (AI). His journey began in a modest household, where he developed an early interest in science and mathematics.

McCarthy graduated from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) with a degree in mathematics in 1948, followed by a PhD from Princeton University in 1951.

In 1956, McCarthy organized the Dartmouth Conference, a pivotal event that officially launched AI as a field. It was at this conference that he coined the term “Artificial Intelligence,” alongside notable figures like Marvin Minsky and Claude Shannon.

His innovative spirit led to the development of the LISP programming language in 1958, which became a fundamental tool for AI research.

McCarthy’s dream was to design a computer program that could derive logical consequences from anything it was told, in combination with its previous knowledge, and act on the basis of its conclusions — a property similar to “what makes us describe certain humans as having common sense”. This research program was described in his 1959 symposium paper ‘Programs with common sense’, often referred to as the ‘advice-taker’ paper.

The advice-taker paper quickly became one of the most influential publications in the field, with the origins of several branches of AI traced back to it. These include automated planning, which aims to generate strategies for agents to achieve given goals, and knowledge representation, the concept of coding knowledge in formal notation for easy inference.

McCarthy’s contributions extended beyond programming languages; he was instrumental in creating time-sharing systems, allowing multiple users to access a single computer simultaneously. This concept laid the groundwork for modern computing and networking.

Throughout his career, McCarthy held positions at prestigious institutions, including Stanford University, where he founded the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He received numerous accolades, including the Turing Award and the National Medal of Science.

McCarthy’s legacy endures through his groundbreaking ideas and innovations, shaping the future of AI and influencing generations of researchers.

He passed away on October 24, 2011, leaving behind a profound impact on technology and computer science.