John McCarthy, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, received his B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University. He has been Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University since 1962, (becoming Professor Emeritus in January 2001) and was also Charles M. Pigott Professor in the School of Engineering. McCarthy was Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford from 1965 to 1980, studying the types of information and modes of reasoning required for intelligent behavior.

He originated the LISP programming language for computing with symbolic expressions, was one of the first to propose and design time-sharing computer systems, and pioneered in using mathematical logic to prove the correctness of computer programs.

McCarthy is the recipient of the A.M. Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery, the first Research Excellence Award of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the Kyoto Prize, and the National Medal of Science. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Sciences. McCarthy was made a Computer Museum History Center Fellow in 1999.