Pamela McCorduck

Also known as Pamela Ann McCorduck

Pamela McCorduck was a British-born American writer whose 1979 book Machines Who Think chronicled the history of artificial intelligence from ancient poets and prophets to 20th-century science. Born in Liverpool in 1940, she studied English literature at UC Berkeley and worked with Edward Feigenbaum in the 1960s, helping with his AI book Computers & Thought and following him to Stanford. In Pittsburgh in the 1970s, she came to know Carnegie Mellon's computer scientists and interviewed AI researchers such as Herbert Simon and Allen Newell for Machines Who Think. After a 1979 move to Columbia University, where she taught creative writing, she co-wrote The Fifth Generation with Feigenbaum in 1983 and later wrote Aaron's Code, about artificial intelligence and the work of Harold Cohen. Her final book, the 2019 memoir This Could Be Important, drew portraits of AI founders Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, and she died in Walnut Creek, California, in 2021.

Born: 1940
Died: 2021
Badges: Pioneer

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

1940–1960

From Liverpool to Berkeley

She is born in Liverpool in October 1940 and moves to the United States in 1946, at age 6. She earns a bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1960, and later a master's degree in English literature from Columbia University.
1960s

Assistant to Edward Feigenbaum

At UC Berkeley, she supports Edward Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman on their artificial intelligence book Computers & Thought (1963). She stays on as Feigenbaum's executive assistant when he moves to Stanford University in 1965 to set up its computer science department, and there she meets Raj Reddy, then a graduate student.
1970s

Teaching English in Pittsburgh

In the 1970s, she lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the University of Pittsburgh's English Department. She gets to know Carnegie Mellon's computer scientists and conducts oral history interviews with AI researchers such as Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, giving the transcripts to CMU's University Archives in 1978.
1979

Machines Who Think

Her book Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry Into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence appears in 1979 and chronicles AI from the dreams and nightmares of ancient poets and prophets to the scientific discoveries of the 20th century. It contains the line "Artificial intelligence began with the ancient wish to forge the gods." A twenty-fifth-anniversary edition updates the story of the field through 2004.
1979–1983

Columbia and The Fifth Generation

In 1979, she moves to New York and begins teaching creative writing at Columbia University. With Feigenbaum, she co-authors The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence and Japan's Computer Challenge to the World in 1983, urging the United States to respond more vigorously to Japan's push for fifth-generation computers capable of intelligent reasoning.
1985–1996

Aaron's Code and other books

She publishes The Universal Machine in 1985 and writes The Rise of the Expert Company (1988) with Edward Feigenbaum and H. Penny Nii. Aaron's Code (1990) examines artificial intelligence and the work of Harold Cohen, and Futures of Women (1996) uses scenario planning to study possible economic and social futures for women.
2018

The Traub-McCorduck Collection

In 2018, she gives Carnegie Mellon University Libraries more than 50 calculating machines, letters and books, including two World War II Enigma machines and rare books by Charles Babbage. CMU's University Libraries celebrate her contributions to the history of AI in a 2018 exhibit.
2019–2021

The memoir This Could Be Important

CMU's ETC Press publishes her memoir This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia in 2019, with personal portraits of AI founders Allen Newell, Herbert Simon, Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy. In August 2019, she discusses Machines Who Think and the early days of AI on Lex Fridman's podcast. She dies at her home in Walnut Creek, California, in October 2021, at 80.