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Creator of genetic algorithms
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John Henry Holland was born in Fort Wayne on February 2, 1929, and was brought up in Ohio. He studied physics at MIT, graduating in 1950, and in 1959 took the University of Michigan's first doctorate in computer science. He spent his career at Michigan, as a professor of psychology and of electrical engineering and computer science, and founded and led its Center for the Study of Complex Systems; he was also a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Holland created genetic algorithms — computer programs that evolve solutions the way populations evolve — and the learning classifier systems built on them; his book Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (1975) founded a field. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on August 9, 2015.
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- § 06 — people of the record · famous-people supplement
Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica; Association for Computing Machinery (obituary).