Home * People * Daniel Edwards

Daniel J. Edwards,
an American computer scientist with a long-term career as a computer security researcher at the National Security Agency (NSA) ^[1]. In 1972 he coined the term Trojan horse for malicious computer programs ^[2]. In the 60s, while affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he was involved in the initial development of LISP within the group of John McCarthy. Along with Timothy Hart, Daniel Edwards wrote a memo on Alpha-Beta in December 1961, revised version in 1963 ^[3]. It also contains a Theorem by Michael Levin, the well known formula of the number of leaf nodes that need to be examined in Alpha-Beta.

Quotes

Alpha-Beta

Quote by John McCarthy from Human-Level AI is harder than it seemed in 1955 ^[4]:

Chess programs catch some of the human chess playing abilities but rely on the limited effective branching of the chess move tree. The ideas that work for chess are inadequate for go. Alpha-beta pruning characterizes human play, but it wasn't noticed by early chess programmers - Turing, Shannon, Pasta and Ulam, and Bernstein. We humans are not very good at identifying the heuristics we ourselves use. Approximations to alpha-beta used by Samuel, Newell and Simon, McCarthy. Proved equivalent to minimax by Hart and Levin, independently by Brudno. Knuth gives details.

LISP

Quote by John McCarthy in From LISP 1 to LISP 1.5 ^[5]:

Many people participated in the initial development of LISP, and I haven't been able to remember all their contributions and must settle, at this writing, for a list of names. I can remember Paul W. Abrahams, Robert Brayton, Daniel Edwards, Patrick Fischer, Phyllis Fox, Saul Goldberg, Timothy Hart, Louis Hodes, Michael Levin, David Luckham, Klim Maling, Marvin Minsky, David Park, Nathaniel Rochester of IBM, and Steve Russell.

See also

• History of Alpha-Beta
• LISP

Selected Publications

• Daniel J. Edwards (1960). LISP II Garbage Collector. AIM-19
• Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy Hart (1961). The Alpha-Beta Heuristic. AIM-030
• John McCarthy, Paul W. Abrahams, Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy P. Hart, Michael I. Levin (1962). LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual. The M.I.T. Press, second edition (1985) as pdf ^[6]
• Daniel J. Edwards, Jeffrey R. Yost (2013). Oral history interview with Daniel J. Edwards. Charles Babbage Institute

References

1. ^ Daniel J. Edwards, Jeffrey R. Yost (2013). Oral history interview with Daniel J. Edwards. Charles Babbage Institute
2. ^ James P. Anderson (1972). Computer Security Planning Study. ESD-TR-73-51, Vol. II, pdf, Trojan Horse, pp. 62
3. ^ Daniel J. Edwards, Timothy Hart (1961). The Alpha-Beta Heuristic. AIM-030
4. ^ John McCarthy Human-Level AI is harder than it seemed in 1955
5. ^ John McCarthy (1979). History of Lisp, From LISP 1 to LISP 1.5
6. ^ McCarthy et al. LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual. from The Computer History Museum Software Preservation Group

What links here?

Up one level