Nathaniel Rochester

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Nathaniel Rochester, (January 14, 1919 – June 8, 2001) was an American electrical engineer and pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence. He received a B.Sc. in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1941, and moved to IBM in 1948, where he designed the IBM 701 and wrote the first symbolic assembler, which allowed programs to be written in short, readable commands rather than pure numbers or punch codes. A group headed by Rochester simulated neural networks on an IBM 704 computer.

In 1955, Rochester co-organized the Dartmouth Conference along with John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and Claude Shannon , and later supervised AI projects, including Arthur Samuel's checkers program, Herbert Gelernter's Geometry Theorem Prover and Alex Bernstein's chess program. In 1958, he was a visiting professor at MIT, where he helped John McCarthy with the development of Lisp programming language. In the 1960s, Rochester continued to work at IBM, directing cutting edge research in cryogenics and tunnel diode circuits.

=Selected Publications=

1950 ...

 * Morton Michael Astrahan, Nathaniel Rochester (1952). The logical organization of the new IBM scientific calculator.
 * Nathaniel Rochester (1953). Symbolic programming. Transactions of the I.R.E. Professional Group on Electronic Computers, Vol. 2, No. 4
 * Charles J. Bashe, Werner Buchholz, Nathaniel Rochester (1954). The IBM Type 702, An Electronic Data Processing Machine for Business. Journal of the ACM, Vol. 1, No. 4
 * John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, Claude Shannon (1955). A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.
 * Nathaniel Rochester, John H. Holland, L. H. Haibt, William L. Duda (1956). Tests on a Cell Assembly Theory of the Action of the Brain, Using a Large Digital Computer. IRE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 2, No. 3
 * Herbert Gelernter, Nathaniel Rochester (1958). Intelligent Behavior in Problem-Solving Machines. IBM Journal of Research and Development, Vol. 2, No. 4
 * Nathaniel Rochester (1958). Symbol Manipulation Language. Memo 5, Artificial Intelligence Project, RLE and MIT Computation Center, pdf hosted by The Computer History Museum

1980 ...

 * Charles J. Bashe, Werner Buchholz, George V. Hawkins, J. James Ingram, Nathaniel Rochester (1981). The Architecture of IBM's Early Computers. IBM Journal of Research and Development, Vol. 25, No. 5
 * Nathaniel Rochester (1983). The 701 Project as Seen by Its Chief Architect. Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 5, No. 2
 * Nathaniel Rochester (1983). Computer Programs Produced by the Planning Group. Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 5, No. 2

=External Links=
 * Nathaniel Rochester (computer scientist) from Wikipedia
 * IBM100 - Magnetic Tape Storage | The Team
 * IBM | Nathaniel Rochester
 * This Day in History: January 14, The Computer History Museum
 * Computer Pioneers - Nathaniel Rochester

=References= Up one level