PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson was an AI researcher and R&D leader whose work applied natural-language processing, information retrieval and machine learning to legal research. He earned a PhD in AI at Leeds, gained tenure in Edinburgh's AI department, and moved to the United States in 1988. At Thomson, he formed a legal NLP group and led legal R&D; his books covered expert systems and natural-language processing, and his 2003 paper treated case-law information extraction. He wrote about ResultsPlus, a Westlaw legal-search add-on, in 2004. He died in 2011 at age 62.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1987

    A PhD and Edinburgh tenure

    He completes a PhD in AI at Leeds and joins Edinburgh's Department of Artificial Intelligence, earning tenure there in 1987.

  2. 1988–1995

    McDonnell Douglas and university teaching

    He moves to the United States in 1988 and becomes principal scientist at McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratories in Saint Louis. In 1989, he publishes the MIT Press book of papers Logic-Based Knowledge Representation. From 1992 to 1995, he teaches postgraduate classes in AI and parallel computing at Clarkson University and serves as a visiting professor at Singapore Polytechnic.

  3. 1995–2005

    Leading Thomson's legal R&D

    He joins Lawyers Cooperative Publishing and forms its natural language processing group in 1995. In 1998, he assumes leadership of the legal R&D group. In 2005, he becomes Thomson's Chief Research Scientist and Vice President of Technology.

  4. 1996

    History Assistant for case law

    In 1996, History Assistant analyzes case-law documents, extracts parties and judges, and builds an appellate chain for a case using information retrieval and machine learning.

  5. 1999–2007

    Books and case-law research

    The third edition of Introduction to Expert Systems appears in 1999. In 2003, he publishes the Artificial Intelligence paper “Information Extraction from Case Law and Retrieval of Prior Cases.” Natural Language Processing for Online Applications reaches a second edition in 2007.

  6. 2004

    ResultsPlus for legal search

    In 2004, he writes about the ResultsPlus rollout in Searcher; the Westlaw add-on performs a complementary search in other databases and presents secondary sources for legal research.

  7. 2009

    A 40-person R&D team

    In 2009, he heads 40 R&D specialists in Eagan who work on information retrieval, document categorization and machine learning.

  8. 2011

    Death at 62

    He dies in 2011 at age 62.

Career

  1. From 2005ThomsonChief Research Scientist and Vice President of Technology
  2. From 1995Lawyers Cooperative Publishing
  3. 1992–1995Clarkson University
  4. 1992–1995Singapore PolytechnicVisiting Professor
  5. From 1988McDonnell DouglasPrincipal Scientist
  6. 1987–1988University of Edinburgh

Education

  1. 1987University of LeedsPhD in AI

From the biography.

  1. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Peter Jackson. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of Edinburgh. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes University of Edinburgh. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Edinburgh. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Peter Jackson yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Awards - IAAIL iaail.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Introduction to Expert Systems - Peter Jackson - Google Books books.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. peterjackson - TEDxHanRiver tedxhanriver.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. AI Timeline | Thomson Reuters thomsonreuters.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Thomson Reuters' Brain | Twin Cities Business tcbmag.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Peter Jackson (scientist) - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 21 October 2026.