well sure, McCarthy worked on that when at MIT, right? That AI group was also doing a computer algebra system, so symbolic differentiation was a current problem

well sure, McCarthy worked on that when at MIT, right? That AI group was also doing a computer algebra system, so symbolic differentiation was a current problem. He is credited with the invention of Lisp though, and had a lot to do with Algol. I'm just curious when the connections between lisp and lambda calculus came about. Did it come later with the Scheme work at T at Yale or was it there also in the earlier work on Lisp. I asked a former colleague about this, Jim Griesmer (who worked on getting the 704 lisp running on the 360 machines), and it was he who mentioned McCarthy's background in analysis. EDIT: ha!, a little googling reveals[1] this story, not very definitive but interesting nonetheless. I should add that Jim Griesmer also told me that Minsky wrote his thesis on turing tapes or some such thing, because his advisors thought AI wasn't yet a developed field. [1] http://brainbrain.blogspot.com/2006/06/dinner-with-john-mccarthy.html http://brainbrain.blogspot.com/2006/06/dinner-with-john-mcca...