A Biographical Sketch of W. W. Bledsoe

W. W. Bledsoe is a major figure in the evolution of the new scientific field artificial intelligence and one of the founding fathers of the related scientific field automated reasoning. Into the following biographical sketch of Bledsoe we weave personal, educational, historical, social, and scientific commentary. At the time we write, Bledsoe is an active contributor to science and education at the University of Texas at Austin. We hope that our fondness for Bledsoe, whom we have known well for twenty-three years, has not clouded our assessment of his many achievements. We are certain that we have failed to treat adequately many aspects of Bledsoe’s life prior to our first meeting him in 1966, and sadly fear that lack of space and lack of investigative effort cause us to omit quite a few interesting aspects of his career since then. We hope, however, that this short sketch of Bledsoe will please his friends and perhaps provide some useful information for a future biographer or historian of science.

[1]  Julian R. Ullmann,et al.  Pattern recognition techniques , 1973 .

[2]  W. Bledsoe,et al.  On a differential inequality , 1954 .

[3]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Improved Memory Matrices for the n-Tuple Pattern Recognition Method , 1962, IRE Trans. Electron. Comput..

[4]  Robert S. Boyer,et al.  A computational logic handbook , 1979, Perspectives in computing.

[5]  J. C. Shepherdson,et al.  Mathematical Logic and Programming Languages , 1985 .

[6]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  A Linear Format for Resolution With Merging and a New Technique for Establishing Completeness , 1970, JACM.

[7]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  A Man-Machine Theorem-Proving System , 1973, IJCAI.

[8]  Robert Anderson.  Completeness results for e-resolution , 1970, AFIPS '70 (Spring).

[9]  Donald I. Good,et al.  A verified encrypted packet interface , 1981, SOEN.

[10]  M. L. Murphy,et al.  A biographical sketch , 1970 .

[11]  Woody Bledsoe,et al.  A Survey of Automated Deduction11This is an enlarged version of a survey talk given by Woody Bledsoe at the Sixth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Seattle, Washington, July 16, 1987. , 1988 .

[12]  W. Bledsoe,et al.  Checking number theory proofs in natural language , 1990 .

[13]  Kenneth Kunen,et al.  Completeness Results for Inequality Provers , 1985, Artif. Intell..

[14]  W. Bledsoe,et al.  Sets generated by rectangles. , 1974 .

[15]  James B. Morris,et al.  E-Resolution: Extension of Resolution to Include the Equality Relation , 1969, IJCAI.

[16]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Splitting and Reduction Heuristics in Automatic Theorem Proving , 1971, Artif. Intell..

[17]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Some Results on Multicategory Pattern Recognition , 1966, J. ACM.

[18]  Robert S. Boyer,et al.  Computer Proofs of Limit Theorems , 1971, IJCAI.

[19]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Non-Resolution Theorem Proving , 1977, Artif. Intell..

[20]  Woody Bledsoe.  I had a dream: AAAI presidential address , 1986 .

[21]  A. Morse.  Theory of Sets. , 1965 .

[22]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Variable Elimination and Chaining in a Resolution-based Prover for Inequalities , 1980, CADE.

[23]  J. C. Shaw,et al.  Empirical explorations of the logic theory machine: a case study in heuristic , 1899, IRE-AIEE-ACM '57 (Western).

[24]  W. Bledsoe,et al.  A topological measure construction. , 1963 .

[25]  Richard C. T. Lee,et al.  Symbolic logic and mechanical theorem proving , 1973, Computer science classics.

[26]  Julian R. Ullmann,et al.  Experiments with the n-tuple Method of Pattern Recognition , 1969, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[27]  Donald I. Good,et al.  Mechanical proofs about computer programs , 1984, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

[28]  Julian R. Ullmann.  Reduction of the storage requirements of Bledsoe and Browning's n-tuple method of pattern recognition , 1971, Pattern Recognit..

[29]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  AUTOMATIC THEOREM PROOF-CHECKING IN SET THEORY. A Preliminary Report. , 1967 .

[30]  Robert S. Boyer,et al.  Computational Logic , 1990, ESPRIT Basic Research Series.

[31]  Lawrence J. Henschen,et al.  What Is Automated Theorem Proving? , 1985, J. Autom. Reason..

[32]  W. Bledsoe.  An Inequality About Complex Numbers , 1970 .

[33]  H. E. Shrobe,et al.  Exploring Artificial Intelligence , 1988 .

[34]  W. W. Bledsoe.  I Had a Dream: AAAI Presidential Address, August 1985 , 1986, AI Mag..

[35]  W. Bledsoe,et al.  On Borel product measures. , 1972 .

[36]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  A Basic Limitation on the Speed of Digital Computers , 1961 .

[37]  Donald I. Good,et al.  An interactive program verification system , 1975 .

[38]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Further Results on the N-tuple Pattern Recognition Method , 1961, IRE Trans. Electron. Comput..

[39]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Some Thoughts on Proof Discovery , 1986, SLP.

[40]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Using Examples to Generate Instantiations of Set Variables , 1983, IJCAI.

[41]  Joseph R. Shoenfield,et al.  Mathematical logic , 1967 .

[42]  Robert B. Anderson.  Some theoretical aspects of automatic theorem proving , 1971 .

[43]  William Judson LeVeque.  Elementary Theory of Numbers , 1990 .

[44]  W. Bledsoe,et al.  Automated Theorem Proving: After 25 Years , 1984 .

[45]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Pattern recognition and reading by machine , 1959, IRE-AIEE-ACM '59 (Eastern).

[46]  W. Bledsoe,et al.  Some aspects of covering theory , 1952 .

[47]  W. W. Bledsoe,et al.  Automatic Proofs of Theorems in Analysis Using Nonstandard Techniques , 1977, JACM.