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Daniel Pearl's father wins computing's Nobel Prize, the AM Turing Award
Judea and Ruth Pearl appear at the 2002 Courage in Journalism Awards.
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Daniel Pearl's father wins computing's Nobel Prize, the AM Turing Award
Longtime UCLA professor Judea Pearl has won the prestigious A.M. Turing Award, often called "the Nobel Prize for computing." It is the computer sciences' highest honor.
Pearl's work focuses on the partnership between humans and machines, a facet of what most people call artificial intelligence. He's also created a way of reasoning while working with imperfect data, which is quickly changing how folks in the computer world solve problems, according to PC Magazine.
Pearl is also the father of Daniel Pearl, the journalist whose murder by Pakistani terrorists in 2002 shocked the nation.
Since then, the elder Pearl has become known for creating the Daniel Pearl Foundation, as well as for writing and speaking around the world.
By training, however, Judea Pearl is a mathematician and an expert in artificial intelligence. He was singled out for his formulas that help computers connect millions of bits of data even when the elements are vague and uncertain — just like people do.
His work has helped to lay the foundation for things like the speech recognition app on iPhones.
The award comes with a $250,000 prize, funded by Google and Intel.
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Pearl has been at UCLA since 1970.
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