Walter pitts
Walter pitts was a logician who worked in the field of neural network. It seems like he was not related to computer science. But nowadays, which paper he published is indispensable in the field of artificial intelligence. That paper named ‘A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity’. In this paper, he and Warren McCulloch established the first mathematical model of a neural work, As known as ‘McCulloch-Pitts neuron’. This model not only helped John von Neumann modeling the computer by using vaccum tubes, which would serve as logic gates, but also provided the basis for artificial neural networks in deep study area.
Walter pitts
In june, 1945, von Neumann published a historic document entitled ‘First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC’. This document described a stored-program binary computing science. But the processing was complex till von Neumann realized that he could abstracted the configuration of wires and switches to deal with various information. So von Nuemann used the vacuum tubes, like logic gates, and by stringing them together as Pitts had discovered. What Pitts explained in his paper about the memory function in neural network also can use on the storage of programs. Finally, von Nuemann cited only a single paper:’A Logical Calculus’ by McCulloch and Pitts.
Why Walter pitts’s paper is so important for deep learning? That is because artificial neural networks recreate the brain’s neuronal network to copy the method of human’s learning. And pitts told us how to model the mind via the logical ways. In this age, the develop of deep learning change the world in many ways, such as driverless cars, voice control on phones, classification images. Walter pitts was a genius because he built the foundation for deep learning. But the story of his life was painful. He was been forgotten with a bed ending.
