Donald Michie

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Donald Michie
Rangoon, British Burma
Died7 July 2007(2007-07-07) (aged 83)
North Weald Bassett, England
NationalityBritish
EducationRugby School
Alma materBalliol College, Oxford
Known forArtificial intelligence
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1952; div. 1959)​
Scientific career
FieldsArtificial intelligence
Institutions
Doctoral students
Websitewww.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~dm

Donald Michie

Tunny
", a German teleprinter cipher.

Early life and education

Michie was born in

war effort, Michie instead attempted to enrol on a Japanese language course in Bedford for intelligence officers. On arrival, it transpired that he had been misinformed, and instead he trained in cryptography,[10] displaying a natural aptitude for the subject. Six weeks later, he was recruited to Bletchley Park and was assigned to the "Testery", a section which tackled a German teleprinter cipher.[11] During his time at Bletchley Park he worked with Alan Turing, Max Newman and Jack Good. Michie and Good were on the initial staff of the Newmanry
.

Fom 1945 to 1952 he studied at Balliol College, Oxford. He received his Doctor of Philosophy (D Phil) degree for research in mammalian genetics, in 1953.[9]

Career and research

In 1960, he developed the

noughts and crosses. Since computers were not readily available at this time, Michie implemented his program with about 304 matchboxes, each representing a unique board state. Each matchbox was filled with coloured beads, each representing a different move in that board state. The quantity of a colour indicated the "certainty" that playing the corresponding move would lead to a win. The program was trained by playing hundreds of games and updating the quantities of beads in each matchbox depending on the outcome of each game.[12]

Michie was director of the

The Turing Institute in Glasgow, alongside Peter Mowforth and Tim Niblett.[14]

Active in the research community into his eighties, he devoted the last decade of his life to the UK charity The Human Computer Learning Foundation, and worked with

memoisation technique.[15]

He was founder and Treasurer of the Human-Computer Learning Foundation, a charity registered in the UK.[8]

Awards and honours

He was awarded numerous fellowships and honours during his career including:

Personal life and death

Michie was married three times, the second to biologist Anne McLaren from 1952 to 1959. He had four children, one by his first wife, and three by Prof. McLaren, including economist Jonathan Michie and health psychologist Susan Michie. Michie and McLaren remained friends after their divorce, and became close again after the death of his third wife. On 7 July 2007 Michie and McLaren were killed in a car crash when their car left the M11 motorway, while travelling from Cambridge to London.[7]

Legacy

The Donald Michie Papers are housed at the British Library. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue.[19]

References

  1. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.347976. Free access icon
  2. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.379389. Free access icon
  3. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.482992. Free access icon
  4. hdl:1842/6650. Free access icon
  5. ^ Muggleton, Stephen (10 July 2007). "Donald Michie". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 10 July 2007.
  6. S2CID 5239830
    .
  7. ^ a b Anon (8 July 2007). "Academic pair killed in car crash". BBC News. Retrieved 8 July 2007.
  8. ^ a b "Donald Michie home page". www.aiai.ed.ac.uk.
  9. ^ a b Michie, Donald. "Curriculum Vitae". Retrieved 8 July 2007.
  10. ISBN 0-19-284055-X
    .
  11. ISBN 0-19-284055-X
    .
  12. ^ Experiments on the mechanization of game-learning by Donald Michie
  13. ^ Special Minute of Senatus, University of Edinburgh, 23rd Jan., 1985
  14. The Turing Institute
    , Glasgow.
  15. ^ Memo functions: a language feature with 'rote-learning' properties. Edinburgh: Department of Machine Intelligence & Perception. 1967. Research Memorandum MIP-R-29.
  16. ^
    ISBN 978-0-19-954089-1
    .
  17. ^ "Elected AAAI Fellows". AAAI. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  18. ^ "Donald Michie". Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Retrieved 14 October 2020.
  19. ^ Donald Michie Papers, archives and manuscripts catalogue, the British Library. Retrieved 15 May 2020
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