Noteworthy: The National Academy of Sciences will award Anderson the 2016 Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences for what it called his “foundational contributions” to the science of learning. The prize includes $100,000.

Age: 68

Family: Married to Lynne Reder; sons John and Abraham

Residence: Point Breeze

Occupation: Anderson is the R.K. Mellon University Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is best known for developing the Adaptive Control of Thought — or ACT — cognitive model. The model has been used to help thousands of students learn.

Education: Bachelor’s degree, University of British Columbia, 1968; Ph.D., Stanford University, 1972

Quote: “The (artificial intelligence) courses I took at Stanford presented an inspiring image of AI as pursuing the goal of a unified characterization of intelligence. While much of AI has abandoned this goal of unification, I imprinted on a similar but different goal of trying to achieve a more unified understanding of human cognition. My major accomplishment is what I have been able to contribute to this goal, currently realized in a cognitive architecture called ACT-R.”

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