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One of the things that struck me the most, watching keynote presentations from the absolute best-of-the-best in my field (infectious diseases) was how often tho
by Fomite 1mo ago
One of the things that struck me the most, watching keynote presentations from the absolute best-of-the-best in my field (infectious diseases) was how often those presentations, which were often reflections on the path of ones career, involved a liberal arts education.
- jll29 1mo agoDonald Michie, a trained classicist specialising on old Greek, was drafted to Bletchley Park and became a codebreaker (and Alan Turing's chess partner "because we were both not very good at it compared to the others" [personal comm.]). After WW II., he became a professor of veterenary sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and eventually he founded the department of artificial intelligence there. He is the editor of the first book series on machine learning (1950s). In his lifetime, Michie published impactful papers in genetics, biology, statistics and computer science -- and classical philology. A liberal arts education and a science education are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.