{"id":985,"date":"2018-01-31T19:14:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T03:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/?p=985"},"modified":"2025-12-15T20:02:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:02:23","slug":"lowell-hawkinson-1943-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2018\/01\/31\/985\/","title":{"rendered":"Lowell Hawkinson, 1943 &#8211; 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lowell Hawkinson passed away at the age of 74 on December 28, 2017 as a result of an accident. Lowell was a pioneer in LISP implementation and artificial intelligence. He co-founded Gensym Corporation in 1986 and served as its CEO through 2006. This <a href=\"http:\/\/www.legacy.com\/obituaries\/bostonglobe\/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&amp;pid=187705344\">obituary<\/a>&nbsp;gives more details of his life and accomplishments.<\/p>\n<p>I first got in touch with Lowell in 2010 because of my interest in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.softwarepreservation.org\/projects\/LISP\/\">archiving LISP history<\/a>. We exchanged emails (and had one phone conversation), and over the years I wrote several blog posts and a journal article about work involving him:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2012\/04\/23\/456\/\">The First International LISP Conference (1963)<\/a><br \/>\nApril 2012<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2012\/07\/06\/239\/\">Harold V. McIntosh and his students: Lisp escapes MIT<\/a><br \/>\nJuly 2012<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2018\/01\/31\/981\/\">The LISP 2 Project<\/a><br \/>\nJanuary 2018<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Although my interactions with Lowell were brief, his kindness and modesty were manifest. He will be deeply missed by his family and friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lowell Hawkinson passed away at the age of 74 on December 28, 2017 as a result of an accident. Lowell was a pioneer in LISP implementation and artificial intelligence. He co-founded Gensym Corporation in 1986 and served as its CEO through 2006. This obituary&nbsp;gives more details of his life and accomplishments. I first got in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/archives\/2018\/01\/31\/985\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Lowell Hawkinson, 1943 &#8211; 2018&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lisp","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcjones.org\/dustydecks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}