PAMELA McCORDUCK

1940 - 2021

McCORDUCK--Pamela. Pamela Ann McCorduck. October 27, 1940 - October 18, 2021. New York, Santa Fe and Walnut Creek. Champion of Artificial Intelligence, prolific writer and published author, philanthropist, loving sister and aunt. Born in Liverpool, England Pamela emigrated to the United States with her parents and younger twin siblings on the original Queen Elizabeth ocean liner arriving Ellis Island, NY on December 12, 1946. The family resided in New Jersey until 1949 when they moved to the Bay Area. For a brief time in the late 50s she and her family lived in Rutherford, NJ where she graduated from Rutherford High School at the early age of 15. Returning to the Bay Area she attended CAL Berkeley earning a BA degree in English Composition and Literature in 1960. She later earned her Master's in English Lit at Columbia University where she became a Professor of Creative Writing. A long time donor, Pamela became a Board member of the UC Berkeley library in 2020. In 1965 Dr. Ed Feigenbaum, her mentor at CAL, became one of the founders of Stanford's newly formed Computer Science Department at which time he asked Pamela to join the team at Stanford where her prolific writing skills were already in full bloom. It was at Stanford that Pamela met her future husband, Dr. Joseph Traub, who later became the head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and the founding Chair of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University in New York. During her stay in Pittsburgh Pamela was a Professor of English Literature at the University of Pittsburgh before moving to New York. Pamela is the author or coauthor of eleven published books, three of them novels. Her novel, "The Edge of Chaos", was short-listed for Best Fiction for the 2008 New Mexico Book Awards. Its sequel, her tenth published book, called "Bounded Rationality", was published in the fall of 2012. She took time from working on the third volume to write a memoir called "This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia", published in late 2019. Her 1979 "Machines Who Think", a history of artificial intelligence, was honored the year of its publication by the New York Public Library and was reissued in 2004 in a 25th anniversary edition. Among her other books are "The Universal Machine", "Aaron's Code", "The Fifth Generation" (co-authored with Ed Feigenbaum), and "The Futures of Women" (co-authored with Nancy Ramsey). As a board member and then vice-president of the PEN American Center in New York Pamela founded and chaired an innovative program that sends authors and their books to newly literate adults at sites all over the country and she chaired a committee to study PEN's long-range future which led to the first significant reorganization of PEN since it was founded in 1922. In 2002 Pamela and her husband purchased a second home in Santa Fe, NM where they continued to live six months of each year as well as six months in New York. She became a Board Member and Treasurer of the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts whilst continuing her membership in her beloved Century Association in New York where she gathered with like-minded people around the piano to sing songs from the "American Songbook" and moderated a reading group addressed to the works of Henry James. According to Martial Hebert, Dean of Computer Sciences at Carnegie Mellon, "Pamela was an early and hugely influential chronicler of artificial intelligence at CMU and elsewhere, and her writing -including direct conversations with many of the giants of the field - helped define the way we view, in her words, machines who think." In 2017 after the passing of her husband she left New York City and Santa Fe and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to be near her sister and brother. Pamela was known by her family and friends to have a tremendous sense of humor by entertaining them with humorous stories leaving everyone in stitches. Pamela was predeceased by her parents Hilda and William "Jack" McCorduck and her loving and devoted husband Dr. Joseph F. Traub. She is survived by her sister Sandra McCorduck Marona (Lee) and brother John McCorduck (Kathy) and her three nephews, four nieces and two step-daughters. According to Nancy Ramsey, "Pamela's public face was grace, intelligence, and wit. Her deep respect for the dignity and rights of every person inspired her writing on technology and Artificial Intelligence. She saw them as tools in fulfilling those goals in the future." A family and friends celebration of her life will be held in the future. Donations may be made to Hospice of the East Bay, 3470 Buskirk Ave, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523 or your local Planned Parenthood.