Bernard Meltzer (computer scientist)

Bernard Meltzer (* 1916 in South Africa ; † July 4, 2008 ) was a British computer scientist and, together with Donald Michie, founded the focus on Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh .

Meltzer studied physics at the University of Cape Town with a bachelor's degree in 1934, was briefly a physics demonstrator in Cape Town and then emigrated to Great Britain, where he carried out radar research for the Marconi Company and, after the start of the Second World War, for the Telecommunications Research Establishment. In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and from 1943 taught military personnel in radar and electronics at the University of Aberdeen . After the war he went into industry (Mullard's Radio Valve Company, from 1949 in the research laboratories of EMI). In 1953 he received his doctorate from the University of London in mathematical physics with Reinhold Fürth (1893–1979). In 1955 he became a lecturer and later a reader in the electrical engineering department of the University of Edinburgh, doing research in electronics (both semiconductors and tubes). His research on ion propulsion led NASA to invite him to Stanford University in 1962.

But he also had an old interest in mathematical logic and began to deal with computer science and artificial intelligence. In 1964/65 he was therefore at the Atlas Computer Laboratory of the Science Research Council and then founded the Metamathematics Unit at the University of Edinburgh. The focus was on automatic proof methods. In 1972 he was given a chair for Computational Logic (corresponding to the new name of the department) and from 1974 to 1977 he was head of the now department for Artificial Intelligence. In 1978 he retired.

Edinburgh became a center of artificial intelligence under him and Donald Michie, with scientists like Robert Kowalski (who was one of the founders of logic programming there in the early 1970s) and Alan Bundy . J. Strother Moore (who did his doctorate there in 1973), Robert S. Boyer (visiting scholar 1971 to 1973) and Pat Hayes (like Robert Kowalski his doctoral student).

With Donald Michie , he published the Machine Intelligence series (volumes 4 to 7) from 1969 to 1972 .

In 1979 he received the first Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award .

Web links

• Obituary at the University of Edinburgh

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernard Meltzer in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
2. ↑ Machine Intelligence series