Allen Newell, an expert on how people think and a developer of complex information processing programs, was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. From his development in the 1950s of Logic Theorist, one of the initial forays into artificial intelligence, to his presentation of the sophisticated problem-solving software system know as "SOAR" in the 1980s, Newell worked to link computer science and advances in understanding human cognition.

Newell was born in San Francisco on March 19, 1927, the son of Robert R. and Jeannette (LeValley) Newell. Robert Newell, a professor of radiology at Stanford Medical School, had a strong influence on his son. "[My father] was in many respects a complete man," Newell told Pamela McCorduck in an interview reported in Machines Who Think. "We used to go up and spend our summers on the High Sierra. He'd built a log cabin up in the mountains in the...