Richard Sutton
Richard Sutton is a University of Alberta computer scientist and a founder of modern reinforcement learning. He began with psychology at Stanford and completed graduate study at UMass Amherst, where he worked with Andrew Barto. His 1988 temporal-difference paper examined how predictions can improve from successive experience. Sutton and Barto’s textbook, first published in 1998 and expanded in 2018, organized the field around agents, actions and rewards. Sutton moved to Alberta in 2003 and helped build its research community. He and Barto received the 2024 ACM Turing Award, announced in 2025. His work continues to examine the computational principles of behavior that improves through interaction with an environment.
- Now at
- University of Alberta
- Works
- 251
- Citations
- 67,564
- h-index
- 64
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1978–1984
From psychology to computing
Completed his doctorate at UMass Amherst in 1984 after psychology studies at Stanford.
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1988
Learning from changing predictions
Published temporal-difference learning, which updates predictions from successive estimates.
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1998
Writing the field’s textbook
Published Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction with Andrew Barto.
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2003
Building research in Alberta
Joined the University of Alberta and helped build its reinforcement learning community.
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2024 award, announced 2025
Sharing the Turing Award
Shared the 2024 Turing Award with Barto; ACM announced it in March 2025.
Sources and credits
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