| Judea Pearl Quick Info | |
|---|---|
| Height | 5 ft 9 in |
| Weight | 75 kg |
| Date of Birth | September 4, 1936 |
| Zodiac Sign | Virgo |
| Hair Color | Salt and Pepper |
Judea Pearl is an Israeli-born American computer scientist and philosopher who is credited for “laying the foundations of modern artificial intelligence, so computer systems can process uncertainty and relate causes to effects.” He is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Causal Inference as well as has served as a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor. In addition to that, Judea Pearl has been a recipient of several accolades including the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence, BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, Classic Paper Award, Rumelhart Prize, Edward A. Dickson Award, ACM Turing Award, Lakatos Award, Harvey Prize, and RCA Laboratories Achievement Award.
Born Name
Judea Pearl
Nick Name
Judea
Sun Sign
Virgo
Born Place
Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine (later: Israel)
Nationality
Education
After deciding to study engineering, Judea Pearl enrolled at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology located in Haifa, Israel. He subsequently graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1960. After that, he finished an M.S. in electrical engineering from the Newark College of Engineering (later known as the New Jersey Institute of Technology) located in Newark, New Jersey, United States in 1961.
He then received an M.S. in physics from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (later known as the New York University Tandon School of Engineering) in 1965.
Occupation
Computer Scientist, Philosopher
Family
- Others – Joseph (Father-In-Law) (Tailor who ran an import business), Victoria (Abada) Rejwan (Mother-In-Law) (Homemaker), Mariane van Neyenhoff Pearl (Daughter-In-Law) (Freelance Journalist, Former Reporter and Columnist for Glamour magazine), Adam Daniel Pearl (Grandson)
Build
Average
Height
5 ft 9 in or 175 cm
Weight
75 kg or 165.5 lbs
Girlfriend / Spouse
Judea Pearl has dated –
- Ruth Pearl (née Eveline Rejwan) (1960-2021) – He got married to Israeli-American software developer Ruth Pearl (née Eveline Rejwan) in the year 1960 and she gave birth to their 3 children – a son named Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963 – February 1, 2002) and two daughters named Tamara Pearl and Michelle Pearl. Their son Daniel worked for the Wall Street Journal and was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Judea and Ruth remained together until her death in 2021.
Race / Ethnicity
White
Judea Pearl is of Polish Jewish descent. On his maternal side, he is a descendant of Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (a Hasidic rabbi and leader).
Hair Color
Salt and Pepper
Eye Color
Blue-Brown
Sexual Orientation
Straight
Distinctive Features
Wears glasses
Religion
Even though he is very connected to Jewish traditions such as holidays and kiddush on Friday night, he has stated that he is a “practicing disbeliever.”
Judea Pearl Facts
- He served in the Israel Defense Forces before joining a kibbutz (an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture). After that, he decided to study engineering in the year 1956.
- After graduating from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Judea Pearl emigrated to the United States in 1960.
- He was employed at RCA Research Laboratories (later: SRI International) in Princeton, New Jersey, and worked on superconductive parametric amplifiers and storage devices and at Electronic Memories, Inc., on advanced memory systems.
- In the year 1970, he joined UCLA’s School of Engineering and started work on probabilistic artificial intelligence.
- Judea Pearl has served as a professor of computer science and statistics and director of the Cognitive Systems Laboratory at UCLA.
- Soon after the murder of his son Daniel in 2002, he co-created the Daniel Pearl Foundation with an aim to promote cross-cultural understanding through journalism, music, and innovative communications.
- On the 7th anniversary of his son Daniel’s death, Judea Pearl wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal which was titled Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil: When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?.
- UCLA computer science professor Richard Korf has described Pearl as “one of the giants in the field of artificial intelligence”.
- He partnered with former Israeli Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, in the documentary titled With My Whole Broken Heart.
Featured Image by Better Than Bacon / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 DEED
