Frank Rosenblatt

Frank Rosenblatt (July 11, 1928 – July 11, 1971) was an American psychologist notable in the field of artificial intelligence.

He was born in New Rochelle, New York as son of Dr. Frank and Katherine Rosenblatt. After graduating from The Bronx High School of Science in 1946, he attended Cornell University, where he obtained his A.B. in 1950 and his Ph.D. in 1956.

He then went to Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo, New York, where he was successively a research psychologist, senior psychologist, and head of the cognitive systems section. This is also where he conducted the early work on perceptrons, which culminated in the development and hardware construction of the Mark I Perceptron in 1960. This was essentially the first computer that could learn new skills by trial and error, using a type of neural network that simulates human thought processes.

Rosenblatt’s research interests were exceptionally broad. In 1959 he went to Cornell’s Ithaca campus as director of the Cognitive Systems Research Program and also as a lecturer in the Psychology Department. In 1966 he joined the Section of Neurobiology and Behavior within the newly formed Division of Biological Sciences, as associate professor. Also in 1966, he became fascinated with the transfer of learned behavior from trained to naive rats by the injection of brain extracts, a subject on which he would publish extensively in later years.

In 1970 he became field representative for the Graduate Field of Neurobiology and Behavior, and in 1971 he shared the acting chairmanship of the Section of Neurobiology and Behavior. Frank Rosenblatt died in July 1971 on his 43rd birthday, in a boating accident in Chesapeake Bay.

Rosenblatt was best known for the Perceptron, an electronic device which was constructed in accordance with biological principles and showed an ability to learn. Rosenblatt’s perceptrons were initially simulated on an IBM 704 computer at Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in 1957. When a triangle was held before the perceptron's eye, it would pick up the image and convey it along a random succession of lines to the response units, where the image was registered.

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