Alan Turing was a British mathematician and computer scientist who is widely regarded as the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He proposed the Turing test, a criterion for machine intelligence, and the Turing machine, a model of computation.
John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who coined the term 'artificial intelligence' and organized the first AI conference in 1956. He also invented the programming language Lisp, which is widely used in AI, and the concept of situation calculus, a formalism for reasoning about actions and change.
Marvin Minsky was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who was one of the founders of the MIT AI Laboratory and the field of artificial neural networks. He also proposed the frame problem, a challenge for knowledge representation and reasoning, and the society of mind theory, a model of artificial and natural intelligence.
Herbert A. Simon was an American economist, political scientist, and cognitive psychologist who was a pioneer of artificial intelligence, information processing, decision-making, and bounded rationality. He also developed the logic theory machine, the first program to prove mathematical theorems, and the general problem solver, a program for solving symbolic problems.
Allen Newell was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who was a collaborator of Herbert A. Simon and a founder of the field of cognitive psychology. He also developed the physical symbol system hypothesis, a proposal that intelligent behavior can be explained by the manipulation of symbols, and the SOAR architecture, a general cognitive architecture for AI and human cognition.