On John McCarthy's 80th birthday, in honor of his contributions

John McCarthy's contributions to computer science and artificial intelligence are legendary. He invented Lisp, made substantial contributions to early work in timesharing and the theory of computation, and was one of the founders of artificial intelligence and knowledge representation. This article, written in honor of McCarthy's 80th birthday, presents a brief biography, an overview of the major themes of his research, and a discussion of several of his major papers. Copyright © 2007, American Association for Artificial Intelligence. All rights reserved.