Charles Rosen (scientist)

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Charles Rosen (December 7, 1917 – December 8, 2002) was a pioneer in artificial intelligence and the founder of SRI International's Artificial Intelligence Center. He led the project that developed Shakey the Robot, which is now in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

Rosen grew up in Montreal and studied at Cooper Union, earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1940. He then studied at McGill University, where he earned a Master of Engineering in communications in 1950. While working at General Electric’s Research Laboratory, he co-authored one of the first textbooks on transistor circuits in 1953. He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Syracuse University in 1956 (with a minor in solid state physics).

In 1957, Rosen joined the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), where he did much of his AI work. In 1959 he co-founded Ridge Vineyards with SRI colleagues Hewitt Crane and David Bennion; Ridge Vineyards later placed fifth in the Judgment of Paris wine tasting. In 1978 he co-founded Machine Intelligence Corporation (MIC) and served as its first CEO. MIC developed the first commercially available industrial machine-vision system, the VS-100, in his garage. MIC later helped spin out Symantec Corporation in 1982.

Rosen was a founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) in 1990.