Norvig is an excellent popularizer and accessible writer, and of course also a very sharp researcher. Because he works in industry I can understand why he might

Norvig is an excellent popularizer and accessible writer, and of course also a very sharp researcher. Because he works in industry I can understand why he might have a higher profile on a site like HN. But "most influential of the post-Turing" era is an incredibly high bar. His personal research contributions are (afaik) on par with what you would expect of a professor at a top school, e.g. Berkeley, where he used to work. But there are hundreds of such people, even just within AI; I think it's only fair to recognize their achievements and influence as well. Personally, my vote for most influential would probably go to someone on the Turing award list... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award) This is not to dump on Norvig at all - he's smarter and more accomplished than I'll ever be, and between the popularity of his internet writings and his co-authored textbook being used in pretty much every undergraduate AI class taught in the past 20 years, he's certainly one of the most widely read computer scientists of all time; probably more people have read his work than ever read Turing's. I just want to push back a bit on the culture of idolization and hero worship that sometimes develops around popular scientists (see also: Feynman, though he did at least win a Nobel prize); it tends to blind people to the true depth of talent and knowledge that exists in the world.