Judea Pearl, has been named the 2011 ACM Turing Award winner.

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award, recognizes Pearl for his advances in probabilistic and causal reasoning. His work has enabled creation of thinking machines that can cope with uncertainty, making decisions even when answers aren’t black or white.  His work has also led to a fusion of neurobiology with computer science, suggesting that underlying all though are universal principles of logic similar to the rules underlying the physics of the universe.  Pearl is widely credited with coining the term “Bayesian Network,” which refers to a statistical model ACM describes as mimicking “the neural activities of the human brain, constantly exchanging messages without benefit of a supervisor.”

This prize is often considered the Nobel Prize of Computer Science.

Daniel Pearl , Son of Judea Pearl and American Hero The journalist who was abducted and murdered in Pakistan in 2002 Now it has emerged that the Mormon Chrurch has baptized Daniel in terrible violation of his family’s rights and thes pirit of Daniel’s life. Pearl was baptized last year without his wife’s or parent’s consent.

From NetworkNews:
Pearl, who was born in Tel Aviv in 1936 and earned degrees from Technion in Israel, Rutgers University and Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, is considered a philosopher as well as a computer scientist. He has conducted research in recent years on computers and morality, an issue that becomes more relevant as interaction between humans and robots becomes more real (See “Georgia Tech researchers talking the talk with robots.”)

Pearl joined UCLA in 1970, having worked previously for RCA Research Laboratories and at Electronic Memories, Inc. While at UCLA he has directed the school’s Cognitive Systems Laboratory, written influential books such as Heuristics, Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems and Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Pearl continues to publish papers prolifically, largely focused on causality.

Pearl has also been a public figure in recent years as president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, formed after his son Daniel was killed by terrorists in 2002 while working for the Wall Street Journal as a journalist.

Pearl, whose hobbies include playing music and singing, has been honored by the industry and his peers many times. Last year he was inducted into the IEEE’s AI Hall of Fame, and he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computers and Cognitive Science from the Franklin Institute in 2008.