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Patrick Henry Winston (February 5, 1943 – July 19, 2019) was an American computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Winston was director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997, succeeding Marvin Minsky, who left to help found the MIT Media Lab. Winston was succeeded as director by Rodney Brooks.
Winston received his undergraduate degree from MIT in 1965, where he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and went on to complete his Masters and PhD there as well, finalizing his PhD in 1970.Winston's thesis work with Marvin Minsky concerned the difficulty of learning; he concluded it was only possible to learn something one nearly already knows. His research interests included machine learning and human intelligence. Winston was known within the MIT community for his excellent teaching and strong commitment to supporting MIT undergraduate culture.
At MIT, Winston taught 6.034: Artificial Intelligence and 6.803/6.833: Human Intelligence Enterprise. Winston also authored a number of computer science and AI textbooks, including:
- Artificial Intelligence ISBN 0201533774
- The Psychology of Computer Vision ISBN 0070710481
- Lisp (with Berthold K.P. Horn) ISBN 0201083191
- On to C ISBN 020158042X
- On to C++ ISBN 0201580438
- On to Java (with Sundar Narasimhan) ISBN 0201725932
- On to Smalltalk ISBN 0201498278
He was also an alumnus of the Mass Gamma chapter of Phi Delta Theta. Winston died in Boston on July 19, 2019.