Judea Pearl
Judea Pearl (born September 4, 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). In 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded Pearl with the 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". He is the author of several books, including the technical Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference, and The Book of Why, a book on causality aimed at the general public.
Judea Pearl | |
|---|---|
Judea Pearl at NIPS 2013 | |
| Born | September 4, 1936 Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine (present day Israel) |
| Nationality | Israeli American |
| Alma mater | Technion – Israel Institute of Technology New Jersey Institute of Technology Rutgers University New York University Tandon School of Engineering |
| Known for | Artificial Intelligence Causality Bayesian Networks |
| Spouse |
Ruth Pearl (née Eveline Rejwan)
(m. 1960; died 2021) |
| Children | 3, including Daniel |
| Awards | IJCAI Award for Research Excellence (1999) Turing Award (2011) Rumelhart Prize (2011) Harvey Prize (2011) BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2021) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science, statistics |
| Thesis | Vortex Theory of Superconductive Memories (1965) |
| Doctoral advisor | Leonard Strauss Leonard Bergstein |
| Doctoral students | Rina Dechter, Hector Geffner, Elias Bareinboim |
| Website | http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html |
Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the International Islamic Front in 2002 for his American and Jewish heritage.