Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!ucsd!sdcc6!beowulf!velasco From: velasco@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Gabriel Velasco) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: AI genealogy Message-ID: Date: 9 Mar 91 23:25:05 GMT References: <5466@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <4867@servax0.essex.ac.uk> Sender: news@sdcc6.ucsd.edu Lines: 68 scotp@csc2.essex.ac.uk (Scott P D) writes: >I have never met Gabriel Velasco, the originator of these genealogical >enquiries. However it seems I am to be cast in the role of his intellectual >grandfather, since I was his advisor's advisor. I am afraid I have bad news >for Mr Velasco that throws doubt on his academic legitimacy: though >very active in the field at the time, my own advisor was not among the >immortals attending the Dartmouth conference. Mom, why didn't you tell me? :-) I've already stated in some other postings that this is just a starting place. We would eventually like to expand the system to include all disciplines. It would obviously not be rooted in the Dartmouth Conference. But, let's look at my advisor's family group record: Name: Richard K. Belew Ph.D. year: 1986 Ph.D. thesis title: Adaptive information retrieval: machine learning in associative networks Thesis advisor: Stephen Kaplan, Psychology Thesis advisor: Paul D. Scott, CCS (a.k.a. Grandpa) Committee member: Robert K. Lindsay . . . Lindsay was advised by Herbert Simon. So, there's some legitimacy there, but it's through a great uncle (or something like that). >If Mr Velasco wishes to remove this blot from his escutcheon, several >possibilities are available; all of which have the effect of extending the >category of founding fathers to include people, such as those Marvin >Minsky lists, who were important to the field but didn't happen to go to >one particular conference. Again, we definitely hope to eventually do that. >Thus ultimately I don't see a way of avoiding actually >considering what AI practitioners have written about their own >work -- for example by doing a citation analysis. This would be an interesting problem as well, but I think it's valid to ask the question of how influential advisors have been? How much has this relationship affected the course of research in the field of AI? This would be lost if all we did was citation analysis. AI is a good field for investigating this because we can pick a point where it all started. It may not have a very sharp point, but it's more pointy than most other fields. >This would obviously >be a mammoth undertaking, That's another problem. We have to have at least part of this done in one week. I'm doing it as part of a class. It's my advisor's on-going interest. -- ________________________________________________ <>___, / / | ... and he called out and said, "Gabriel, give | /___/ __ / _ __ ' _ / | this man an understanding of the vision." | /\__/\(_/\/__)\/ (_/_(/_/|_ |_______________________________________Dan_8:16_|