From: Marvin Minslir Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 7:09 PM To: Jeffrey Epstein Subject: Minsky biography / CV Brief Academic Biography of Marvin Minsky Marvin Minsky is Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the Massach=setts Institute of Technology. His research has led to both theoretical and=practical advances in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, neural=networks, and the general theory of computation. (In 1961 he showed that a=y computer can be simulated by a machine with only two registers and two si=ple instructions.) He has made many other contributions in the domains of c=mputer graphics, symbolic computation, knowledge representation, commonsens=cal semantics, and both symbolic and connectionist learning. He has also be=n involved with advanced technologies for exploring space. Professor Minsky was also a pioneer of robotics and telepresence. He designe= and built some of the first visual scanners, and mechanical hands with tac=ile sensors, along with their software and hardware interfaces. These influ=nced many subsequent robotic projects. In 1951 he built the first randomly wired neural network learning -- based o= reinforcing the synaptic connections that contributed to recent reactions.=ln 1956, when a Junior Fellow at Harvard, he invented and built the first C=nfocal Scanning Microscope, an optical instrument with unprecedented resolu=ion and image quality. Since the early 1950s, Marvin Minsky has worked on using computational ideas=to characterize human psychological processes, as well as working to endow m=chines with intelligence. His 1961 paper, "Steps Towards Artificial Intelli=ence" surveyed and analyzed what had been done before, and outlined many ma=or problems that the infant discipline would later later need to face. The 1=63 paper, "Matter, Mind, and Models" addressed the problem of making self-a=are machines. In "Perceptrons," 1969, Minsky and Seymour Papert characteriz=d the capabilities and limi