Textbook of AI

1928–2016, Mathematician, educator, AI researcher

Seymour Papert was a South-African-born mathematician and educator who collaborated with Marvin Minsky at MIT for three decades. With Minsky he wrote Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry (1969), the rigorous mathematical analysis of the limits of single-layer perceptrons that, fairly or otherwise, is often credited with cooling neural-network research for a decade.

Papert's separate and arguably greater legacy is in education. He invented the Logo programming language (with Wally Feurzeig and Cynthia Solomon, 1967), designed for children to program by directing a "turtle" graphics cursor. His 1980 book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas set out the philosophy of constructionism, that children learn best by building things, and shaped a generation of educational technology. The LEGO Mindstorms robotics platform is named in homage.

Papert had earlier worked with Jean Piaget at Geneva (1958–1963), absorbing the constructivist tradition that he carried into his Logo work. He was severely brain-damaged in a 2006 traffic accident in Hanoi and never fully recovered, dying in 2016.