Honorary Degree Books 2026
Dr Richard Sutton
Richard Sutton, a professor in the Department of Computing Science and a founder of modern computational reinforcement learning, has been instrumental in shaping Alberta into a world-renowned AI hub since arriving at the U of A in 2003. The usefulness of Sutton’s visionary research has expanded far beyond computer science, with wide-ranging applications in medicine, economics, engineering and agriculture. Sutton got his start at Stanford University as an undergraduate studying behavioural psychology. He went on to earn his master’s and PhD in computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he met longtime collaborator Andrew Barto. In 1998, they published Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction, which has remained an essential text in the field. Sutton served as Chair of Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence at iCORE/AITF until 2018, founded the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and is also chief scientific advisor at Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. In 2017, he co-founded Google DeepMind Alberta, and in 2023, he announced a partnership with the celebrated video game engineer John Carmack. In 2018, the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association recognized Sutton with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Society of London and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Most recently, he was a co-recipient of the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award, the world’s most prestigious prize in computing science.
The Sciences of the Artificial
Herbert A. Simon’s (1916–2001) foundational text on artificial intelligence explores “how a science of the artificial is possible” and the ways in which “artificiality is interesting principally when it concerns complex systems that live in complex environments” (xi). An American social scientist and pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence, Simon received numerous accolades, including the 1975 A.M. Turing Award (shared with collaborator Allen Newell), the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics, and the National Medal of Science (1986). In his opening chapter on natural and artificial worlds, Simon addresses the origin of the term “artificial intelligence,” noting that it “...was coined, I think, right on the River Charles, at M.I.T. Our own research group at RAND and Carnegie-Mellon University have preferred phrases like ‘complex information processing’ and ‘simulation of cognitive processes.’ But then we run into new terminological difficulties, for the dictionary also says that ‘to simulate’ means ‘to assume or have the mere appearance or form of, without the reality; imitate; counterfeit; pretend.’ At any rate, ‘artificial intelligence’ seems to be here to stay…” (4). This first edition is of particular research interest because it presents the text in its original form. In the more widely available second (1981) and third (1996) editions, the sections on economic systems, organizational design, and modern computational tools are significantly expanded. First edition copies of this book are hard to come by, especially those with the elusive dust jacket. This copy is bound in white cloth with minimal wear and includes a near-fine jacket. As a significant early text on artificial intelligence, it is a valuable addition to the Peel library’s interdisciplinary science holdings. [Q 175 S59 1969]