Main description:

Donald Michie was an extraordinary character. In a scientific career that spanned nearly 65 years, he was the pioneer in several fields including computing, mouse embryology, transplantation biology, and machine intelligence. Tragically, he died in a car crash in 2007.

Here, Ashwin Srinivasan presents a varied collection of Michie's writings, from Colossus and computers to mouse genetics and politics. Srinivasan, a computer scientist and grand-student of Donald Michie, introduces each section and brings together an engaging collection of lively essays, revealing Michie's remarkable personality and painting a picture of his life and interests.

Contents:

Foreword ; Editor's Note ; A Lifetime in a Minute ; Acknowledgements ; MACHINES AND MACHINE INTELLIGENCE ; The Beginning ; Colossus and the Breaking of the Wartime "Fish" codes ; Turing's Vision ; EARLY PROMISE ; Machines That Can Play Games ; Where Britain Lags Behind ; Edinburgh Will Set the Pace ; Amplifying Intelligence by Machine ; Clever or Intelligent? ; LIGHTHILL AND AFTER ; Machine Intelligence in the Cycle Shed ; Response to Lighthill ; Computer Chess an the Humanization of Technology ; Slaughter on 7th Avenue ; Human Window on the World ; The Turing Institute ; Rules from Brains ; CONSCIOUSNESS, TURING'S TEST AND THE CHILD MACHINE ; Turing's Test and Conscious Thought ; "Strong AI": An Adolescent Disorder ; It Takes Two to Tango ; Return of the Imitation Game ; BIOLOGY ; Maternal Inheritance in Mice ; Superpregnancy in Mice ; Studies on the Transfer of Fertilized Mouse Eggs ; Transplantation Biology ; Embryo Selection for Human IVF ; Thinking about Thinking ; IN CONVERSATION ; 50 Years after Breaking the Codes ; Secrets of Colossus Revealed ; Recollections of Early AI in Britain ; Tokyo-Edinburgh Dialogue ; "FROM OUR SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT" ; On Keeping Mice ; The last liger ; Archbishop Among the Test-Tubes ; There's no such thing as a "Superior" Race ; Nature v. nurture ; Song and Dance story ; Scientific Advice to Governments ; Keeping one jump ahead ; What they Read and Why ; Sciencemanship ; PEACE AND GOODWILL ; The Tramp's Charter ; Descent into Unreason ; BIBLIOGRAPHY ; Selected Publications in Biology ; Selected Publications in Computer Science ; Books ; Web Links