Remembering John McCarthy: the Turing laureate who coined "AI" and created LISP
moenig · x · 2026-09-04
ACM marks the birthday (Sept 4, 1927) of John McCarthy, recipient of the 1971 Turing Award for his work in artificial intelligence. McCarthy coined and popularized the term "artificial intelligence" at the 1956 Dartmouth conference, created LISP at MIT in 1958 — a primary tool for AI research — and pioneered general-purpose time-sharing systems that laid groundwork for ARPAnet and the modern internet.
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