Biographical portraits of key figures from the isHistory digital archive. Profiles track only.https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/en-usCopyright 2026 isHistory Digital Archiveishistory@proton.me (Ishaan)60https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p15-fei-fei-li/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p15-fei-fei-li/She assembled fourteen million labelled images when everyone said no, built ImageNet, and enabled the deep learning revolution. The portrait of its creator.Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyfei-fei-liimagenetcomputer-visionai-ethicshuman-centered-aiProfilesMinds & Machines1975-https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p10-frank-rosenblatt/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p10-frank-rosenblatt/He built the Perceptron — the first learning machine. Minsky called it a dead end. History proved Rosenblatt right. The most underrated figure in AI history.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyfrank-rosenblattperceptronneural-networksdeep-learning-historyProfilesMinds & Machines1928-1971https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p11-geoffrey-hinton/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p11-geoffrey-hinton/He kept working on neural networks when everyone said it was dead. He built deep learning. Then he quit Google to warn the world he feared what he had built.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historygeoffrey-hintondeep-learningneural-networksbackpropagationai-safetyProfilesMinds & Machines1947-https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p12-yann-lecun/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p12-yann-lecun/He invented convolutional neural networks and became Meta's AI architect. The most argumentative Godfather of Deep Learning — and why he's usually right.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyyann-lecunconvolutional-networksdeep-learningmeta-aiai-safetyProfilesMinds & Machines1960-https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p13-yoshua-bengio/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p13-yoshua-bengio/Third Godfather of Deep Learning — foundational work on attention and generative models, and his evolution into AI's most prominent voice for safety and ethics.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyyoshua-bengiodeep-learningai-safetyneural-networksmontrealProfilesMinds & Machines1964-https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p14-jurgen-schmidhuber/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p14-jurgen-schmidhuber/He invented LSTM — the architecture behind speech recognition and translation. He argues he deserves more credit. Why he might be right, and why it's hard.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyjurgen-schmidhuberlstmrecurrent-neural-networksdeep-learning-historyProfilesMinds & Machines1963-https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p6-john-mccarthy/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p6-john-mccarthy/He organised Dartmouth, coined 'artificial intelligence', invented LISP, and founded Stanford AI Lab. The complicated legacy of the man who gave AI its name.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyjohn-mccarthylispsymbolic-aistanford-ai-labProfilesMinds & Machines1927-2011https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p7-marvin-minsky/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p7-marvin-minsky/His towering influence on early AI, his overconfident predictions, the devastating Perceptrons critique, and the Society of Mind. AI's most complex figure.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historymarvin-minskymit-ai-labperceptronssociety-of-mindProfilesMinds & Machines1927-2016https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p8-newell-and-simon/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p8-newell-and-simon/The Logic Theorist, the General Problem Solver, the cognitive revolution, and a Nobel Prize. The most consequential scientific partnership in AI history.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyallen-newellherbert-simoncognitive-sciencesymbolic-aiProfilesMinds & Machines1916-2001 / 1927-1992https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p9-joseph-weizenbaum/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p9-joseph-weizenbaum/He built the first chatbot to show how shallow conversation was — and watched in horror as people fell in love with it. The prophet of AI ethics nobody heard.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyjoseph-weizenbaumelizaai-ethicsphilosophy-of-aiProfilesMinds & Machines1923-2008https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p4-norbert-wiener/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p4-norbert-wiener/He invented cybernetics and warned about automation destroying human labour — in 1950. The forgotten genius who saw everything coming and nobody listened.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historynorbert-wienercyberneticsai-ethicsfeedback-controlProfilesMinds & Machines1894-1964https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p5-claude-shannon/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p5-claude-shannon/In 1948 a Bell Labs engineer published a paper that gave the entire digital age its mathematical foundation. He then built juggling robots and rode a unicycle.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyclaude-shannoninformation-theorybell-labsfoundations-of-aiProfilesMinds & Machines1916-2001https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p3-john-von-neumann/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p3-john-von-neumann/He spoke eight languages, memorized entire books, and designed the architecture every computer still uses today. The astonishing life of von Neumann.Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyjohn-von-neumanncomputer-architecturegame-theorymanhattan-projectProfilesMinds & Machines1903-1957https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p2-alan-turing/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p2-alan-turing/He broke the Nazi's unbreakable code, designed the modern computer, asked whether machines could think — then was destroyed by the country he saved.Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyalan-turingturing-testbletchley-parkcryptographyProfilesMinds & Machines1912-1954https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p1-ada-lovelace/https://astro-project-e55.pages.dev/blog/p1-ada-lovelace/She wrote the world's first computer program in 1843 for a machine that didn't exist yet. Then history forgot her for a hundred years.Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTai-historyada-lovelaceprogramminganalytical-enginepioneerProfilesMinds & Machines1815-1852