David Rumelhart

David E. Rumelhart, whose computer simulations of perception gave scientists some of the first testable models of neural processing and proved helpful in the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence. David Everett Rumelhart was born on June 6, 1942, in Wessington Springs, S.D., the eldest of three sons born to Everett, a printer, and Thelma, a librarian. He graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1963 with a degree in psychology and math and completed his Ph.D. at Stanford in 1967. He spent 20 years on the faculty of the University of California, San Diego, before returning to Stanford in 1987. He retired from Stanford in 1998, when the symptoms of Pick's disease became disabling, and moved in with his brother Donald in Ann Arbor, Mich. In addition to his brother Donald and his son Karl, his survivors include another son, Peter; another brother, Roger; and four grandsons. His marriage to Marilyn Austin ended in divorce.