Judea Pearl (Born 1936) is a
computer scientistA computer scientist is a person who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
and philosopher, best known for developing the
probabilisticProbability is a way of expressing knowledge or belief that an event will occur or has occurred. In mathematics the concept has been given an exact meaning in probability theory, that is used extensively in such areas of study as mathematics, statistics, finance, gambling, science, and philosophy...
approach to
artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"...
, in particular through Bayesian networks (see the article on
belief propagationBelief propagation is a message passing algorithm for performing inference on graphical models, such as Bayesian networks and Markov random fields. It is an inherently Bayesian procedure, which calculates the marginal distribution for each unobserved node, conditional on any observed nodes...
), for the formalization of causal reasoning (see the article on
causalityCausality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is a direct consequence of the first....
) and the formalization of
Structural equation modelingStructural equation modeling is a statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relationships using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions...
. He was the father of journalist
Daniel PearlDaniel Pearl was an American-Jewish journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Karachi, Pakistan by al Qaeda terrorists. At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl served as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, and was based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India...
, who was kidnapped and murdered by militants in
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
in 2002.
Pearl received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion,
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
, in 1960, a Master degree in Physics from
Rutgers UniversityRutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in the state of New Jersey. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766 and is the eighth-oldest college in the United States...
,
U.S.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, in 1965, and a Ph.D.
Judea Pearl (Born 1936) is a
computer scientistA computer scientist is a person who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
and philosopher, best known for developing the
probabilisticProbability is a way of expressing knowledge or belief that an event will occur or has occurred. In mathematics the concept has been given an exact meaning in probability theory, that is used extensively in such areas of study as mathematics, statistics, finance, gambling, science, and philosophy...
approach to
artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"...
, in particular through Bayesian networks (see the article on
belief propagationBelief propagation is a message passing algorithm for performing inference on graphical models, such as Bayesian networks and Markov random fields. It is an inherently Bayesian procedure, which calculates the marginal distribution for each unobserved node, conditional on any observed nodes...
), for the formalization of causal reasoning (see the article on
causalityCausality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is a direct consequence of the first....
) and the formalization of
Structural equation modelingStructural equation modeling is a statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relationships using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions...
. He was the father of journalist
Daniel PearlDaniel Pearl was an American-Jewish journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Karachi, Pakistan by al Qaeda terrorists. At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl served as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, and was based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India...
, who was kidnapped and murdered by militants in
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
in 2002.
Biography
Pearl received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion,
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
, in 1960, a Master degree in Physics from
Rutgers UniversityRutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in the state of New Jersey. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766 and is the eighth-oldest college in the United States...
,
U.S.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, in 1965, and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, U.S., in 1965. He worked at RCA Research Laboratories on superconductive parametric and storage devices and at Electronic Memories, Inc., on advanced memory systems. He then joined UCLA's
Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied ScienceThe Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science at University of California, Los Angeles, was opened with an enrollment of 379 students in the fall of 1945. It opened as the College of Engineering until it was changed to school on February 21, 1969...
in 1970, where he is currently a professor of Computer Science and Statistics and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory. He and his wife, Ruth had one son, Daniel, in 1963.
Beheading of Daniel Pearl
In 2002, his son,
Daniel PearlDaniel Pearl was an American-Jewish journalist who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Karachi, Pakistan by al Qaeda terrorists. At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl served as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal, and was based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India...
, a journalist working for the Wall Street Journal was kidnapped and murdered in
PakistanPakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located at the crossroads of South Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia...
, leading Judea and the other members of the family and friends to create the Daniel Pearl Foundation
http://www.danielpearl.org. On the Seventh anniversary of Daniel's death, Judea wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal titled
Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?.
Research
Judea Pearl was one of the pioneers of Bayesian networks and the
probabilisticProbability is a way of expressing knowledge or belief that an event will occur or has occurred. In mathematics the concept has been given an exact meaning in probability theory, that is used extensively in such areas of study as mathematics, statistics, finance, gambling, science, and philosophy...
approach to
artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"...
, and one of the firsts to mathematize causal modeling in the empirical sciences. His work is also intended as a high-level
cognitive modelA cognitive model is an approximation to animal cognitive processes for the purposes of comprehension and prediction. Cognitive models can be developed within or without a cognitive architecture, though the two are not always easily distinguishable.In contrast to cognitive architectures, cognitive...
. He is interested in the philosophy of science, knowledge representation, nonstandard logics, and learning. Pearl is described as "one of the giants in the field of artificial intelligence” by UCLA computer science professor Richard Korf
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/magazine/pearl.html. His work on causality has "revolutionized the understanding of causality in statistics, psychology, medicine and the social sciences"
http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/Newell_2003.htm.
Books
- Heuristics, Addison-Wesley, 1984
- Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems, Morgan-Kaufmann, 1988
- Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, Cambridge University Press, 2000
- I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, Jewish Lights, 2004.
Scientific papers
Lectures
Awards
External links