Ray Solomonoff, Founding Father of Algorithmic Information Theory

Ray J. Solomonoff died on December 7, 2009, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of complications of a stroke caused by an aneurism in his head. Ray was the first inventor of Algorithmic Information Theory which deals with the shortest effective description length of objects and is commonly designated by th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Paul M.B. Vitanyi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2010-07-01
Series:Algorithms
Subjects:
n/a
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/1999-4893/3/3/260/
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Summary:Ray J. Solomonoff died on December 7, 2009, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of complications of a stroke caused by an aneurism in his head. Ray was the first inventor of Algorithmic Information Theory which deals with the shortest effective description length of objects and is commonly designated by the term “Kolmogorov complexity.” In the 1950s Solomonoff was one of the first researchers to treat probabilistic grammars and the associated languages. He treated probabilistic Artificial Intelligence (AI) when “probabilistic” was unfashionable, and treated questions of machine learning early on. But his greatest contribution is the creation of Algorithmic Information Theory. [...]
ISSN:1999-4893