A Toast for Gordon Plotkin's Sixtieth
Birthday
"In 1969, I came to Edinburgh for the Machine Intellegence
Workshop, where Donald Michie introduced me to a young graduate
student named Gordon Plotkin, whom he described as "brilliant". So
when Gordon began to speak, I listened carefully with my innocent
American ears - and quickly concluded that Gordon must indeed be
brilliant, since I could hardly understand a word.
"Since then, my ears have grown more sophisticated, Gordon's
accent has become more subtle - and he has more than justified
Michie's characterization.
"At that time, the two of us shared a common interest in
dualizing resolution. I'd discovered a simple algorithm for
antiunification, but Gordon had gone far beyond me in exploring the
clausal level, in what became his thesis on inductive
reasoning.
"Note that this thesis was in Artificial Intelligence, and that
we had met at a meeting devoted to AI. Nowadays this seems strange,
but at the time it did not. Computer Science then was like the
first moment of the big bang. Everything was tightly connected,
everybody knew everybody else's research, and researchers careened
from one area to another - areas that would be considered separate
fields of study today.
"What is special about Gordon is that he has continued to careen
in this way throughout his career, while doing work of the highest
quality and originality. I suspect that, if I were to ask each of
you here to name your favorite paper of Gordon's, we would amass a
list containing most of his papers.
"Another way of saying much the same thing is that nowadays each
researcher inhabits a particular apple tree, whose low-lying apples
have already been picked, so that he must be an accomplished
climber to reach the few apples that remain. But in the 50's and
60's, the great researchers were those who could spot new trees.
Somehow, we had stumbled into a mysterious forest, full of
wonderous but barely visible flora.
"And somehow Gordon has retained this ability to spot new trees,
and has brought us a bountiful harvest.
"So I propose a toast to Gordon Plotkin: Thank you for all you
have given us. Happy birthday, young man. And keep up the good
work."
John C. Reynolds
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