Woody Bledsoe

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Bledsoe (November 12, 1921 – October 4, 1995) was an American mathematician, computer scientist, and prominent educator. He is one of the founders of artificial intelligence (AI), making early contributions in pattern recognition,[1] facial recognition,[2] and automated theorem proving.[3][4][5][6] He continued to make significant contributions to AI throughout his long career.

Woodrow Wilson Bledsoe
Born(1921-11-12)November 12, 1921
Maysville, Oklahoma
DiedOctober 4, 1995(1995-10-04) (aged 73)
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
SpouseVirginia (née Norgaard)
Children4
Awards
Scientific career
ThesisSeparative Measures for Topological Spaces (1953)
Doctoral advisorAnthony Perry Morse
Doctoral studentsRobert S. Boyer

Beginning in 1966, he worked at the department of mathematics and computer science of the University of Texas at Austin, holding the Peter O'Donnell Jr. Centennial Chair in Computing Science starting in 1987.[7]: 723 

Bledsoe joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an adult, and served in the church as a bishop, counselor to the stake presidency, and stake patriarch. He also served as a leader in the Boy Scouts of America.[8][9] Bledsoe died on October 4, 1995, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Works

The n-tuple method (1959) was an early method for learning a pattern recognition program. The basic method is illustrated by the problem of recognizing 36 alphanumerical characters (0-9, a-z).[10]

Further reading
  • Boyer, Anne Olivia; Boyer, Robert S. (1991). "A Biographical Sketch of W. W. Bledsoe". In Boyer, Robert S. (ed.). Automated Reasoning: Essays in Honor of Woody Bledsoe. Kluwer Academic Publishers Group. pp. 1–29. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.57.3396. ISBN 9780792314097.

Selected publications

References
  1. W.W. Bledsoe (1966). "Some Results on Multicategory Pattern Recognition". J. ACM. 13 (2): 304–316. doi:10.1145/321328.321340. S2CID 17150326.
  2. Raviv, Shaun. "The Secret History of Facial Recognition". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved August 31, 2023.
  3. W.W. Bledsoe (1971). "Splitting and Reduction Heuristics in Automatic Theorem Proving" (PDF). Artif. Intell. 2 (1): 55–77. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(71)90004-x.
  4. W.W. Bledsoe (September 1975). "A New Method for Proving Certain Presburger Formulas". Proc. IJCAI (PDF). pp. 15–21.
  5. W.W. Bledsoe (1977). "Non-Resolution Theorem Proving". Artificial Intelligence. 9: 1–35. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.455.6139. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(77)90012-1. — Preceding technical report ATP29 (Sep.1975)
  6. W.W. Bledsoe and Kenneth Kunen and Robert E. Shostak (1985). "Completeness Results for Inequality Provers". Artif. Intell. 27 (3): 255–288. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(85)90015-3. — Preceding technical report ATP65 (1983)
  7. Jean-Louis Lassez; Gordon Plotkin, eds. (1991). Computational Logic — Essays in Honor of Alan Robinson. Cambridge/MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-12156-9.
  8. Memorial Resolution – Woodrow W. Bledsoe
  9. "UT science pioneer 'Woody' Bledsoe dies". Austin American-Statesman. October 6, 1995. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
  10. Bledsoe, W. W.; Browning, I. (1959). "Pattern recognition and reading by machine". Papers presented at the December 1-3, 1959, eastern joint IRE-AIEE-ACM computer conference on - IRE-AIEE-ACM '59 (Eastern). ACM Press. pp. 225–232. doi:10.1145/1460299.1460326. S2CID 15672245.


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