Margaret Boden

For the Scottish artist, see Margaret Boden (artist). For Heinrich Himmler's wife, see Margarete Himmler.

Margaret A. Boden
OBE FBA
Professor Margaret A Boden OBE ScD FBA
Born
Margaret Ann Boden

(1936-11-26)26 November 1936
London, England
Died18 July 2025(2025-07-18) (aged 88)
Brighton, England
Known forArtificial intelligence research
Children2
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
DisciplineCognitive science
InstitutionsUniversity of Sussex

Margaret Ann Boden OBE FBA (26 November 1936 – 18 July 2025) was a British academic. She was a research professor of cognitive science in the department of informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraced the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.

Early life and education

Margaret Ann Boden was born on 26 November 1936 in London.[1] She was educated at the City of London School for Girls in the late 1940s and 1950s.[2] At Newnham College, Cambridge, she took first class honours in medical sciences which she finished after 2 instead of 3 years in 1958,[3] achieving the highest score across all Natural Sciences. In 1957, she studied the history of modern philosophy at the Cambridge Language Research Unit run by Margaret Masterman as her second degree, which she finished in 1959.[4]

Career

Boden was appointed lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in 1959. She became a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University from 1962 to 1964.[5] She then returned to Birmingham for a year before moving to a lectureship in philosophy and psychology at the University of Sussex in 1965, where she was appointed as reader, then professor in 1980.[6] She was awarded a PhD in social psychology (specialism: cognitive studies) by Harvard in 1968.[7]

She credited reading "Plans and the Structure of Behavior" by George A. Miller with giving her the realisation that computer programming approaches could be applied to the whole of psychology.[8]

Boden became Dean of the School of Social Sciences in 1985.[6] Two years later she became the founding dean of the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (COGS), precursor of the university's later Department of Informatics. From 1997 she was a research professor of Cognitive Science in the department of informatics, where her work encompassed the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.[9]

Boden became a fellow of the British Academy in 1983 and served as its vice president from 1989 to 1991.[10] Boden was a member of the editorial board for The Rutherford Journal.[11]

In 2001 Boden was appointed a member of the Order of the British Empire for her services in the field of cognitive science.[6] The same year she was also awarded an honorary doctor of science from the University of Sussex.[6] She also received an honorary degree from the University of Bristol.[12] A PhD scholarship that is awarded annually by the department of informatics at the University of Sussex was named in her honour.[13]

Media

In October 2014 and January 2015, Boden was interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili on the BBC Radio Four programme The Life Scientific.[8]

In February 2017, Boden, along with other researchers, participated in a debate organized by the British Academy on the readiness of humans to develop romantic relationships with robots.[14]

Personal life and death

Boden was married to John Spiers, a writer and publisher from 1967 until 1981. They had a son and a daughter.[15]

Boden had a faible for the colour purple and the Cook Islands, spending vacations there for 30 years.[15] She died in Brighton on 18 July 2025, at the age of 88.[1][16][3]

Publications

  • Purposive Explanation in Psychology (Harvard University Press, 1972);
  • Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man (1977/1987: 2nd edn., MIT Press), ISBN 978-0-262-52123-9
  • Piaget (Fontana Modern Masters 1979; 2nd edn. HarperCollins, 1984);
  • The Case for a Cognitive Biology. (In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 54: 25–40, with Susan Khin Zaw, 1980);
  • Minds and Mechanisms (Cornell University Press, 1981);
  • Computer Models of Mind: Computational approaches in theoretical psychology (Cambridge University Press, 1988), ISBN 978-0-521-27033-5
  • Artificial Intelligence in Psychology: Interdisciplinary Essays (MIT Press, 1989), ISBN 978-0-262-02285-9
  • The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, ed. (Oxford Readings in Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 1989/90), ISBN 978-0-19-875155-7
  • The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (Weidenfeld/Abacus & Basic Books, 1990; 2nd edn. Routledge, 2004), ISBN 978-0-415-31453-4
  • Dimensions of Creativity, ed. (MIT Press, 1994);
  • The Philosophy of Artificial Life, ed. Oxford University Press, 1996).
  • Artificial Intelligence (Handbook of Perception and Cognition, 2nd Ed, Academic Press Inc., 1996), ISBN 978-0-12-161964-0
  • Mind As Machine: a History of Cognitive Science, (2 volumes, Oxford University Press, 2006), ISBN 978-0-19-929237-0 / ISBN 978-0-19-924144-6. This generated public disagreement with Noam Chomsky.[17]
  • AI: Its Nature and Future (2016), ISBN 978-0-19-877798-4

Honours

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Rosenwald, Michael S. (14 August 2025). "Margaret Boden, Philosopher of Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 14 August 2025. Retrieved 17 August 2025.
  2. ^ "Notable Alumni". City of London School for Girls. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  3. ^ a b Bryson, Joanna (12 August 2025). "Margaret Boden obituary: cognitive scientist who explored how machines might emulate human imagination". Nature. 644 (8077): 603–603. doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02548-0. ISSN 1476-4687.
  4. ^ "Cambridge Women Philosophers — Faculty of Philosophy". www.phil.cam.ac.uk. 11 April 2014. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  5. ^ "Hove's Maggie Boden: A world authority on artificial intelligence". Sussex Life. 31 July 2017. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  6. ^ a b c d "Professor Margaret Boden awarded OBE". www.sussex.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  7. ^ "John Templeton Foundation: Participants". Humbleapproach.templeton.org. Archived from the original on 19 September 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  8. ^ a b "BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Margaret Boden". Bbc.co.uk. 21 October 2014. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  9. ^ "Margaret A Boden | Home Page". Ruskin.tv. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  10. ^ "Professor Margaret Boden". The British Academy. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  11. ^ "Editorial board". The Rutherford Journal. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  12. ^ "2002: Honorary Degrees awarded". www.bristol.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  13. ^ "The Margaret Boden Informatics PhD Scholarship : University of Sussex". www.sussex.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 March 2019.
  14. ^ "Are we ready for robot relationships?". ieet.org. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  15. ^ a b Cliff, Dave (1 August 2025). "Margaret Boden obituary". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
  16. ^ "Obituary: Professor Maggie Boden". The University of Sussex. 28 July 2025. Retrieved 14 August 2025.
  17. ^ Noam Chomsky Symposium on Margaret Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, Oxford (2006) two volumes. Reviewed in Artificial Intelligence Volume 171, Issue 18, (December 2007) Pages 1094–1103
  18. ^ "2016 ISAL Awards: Winners". 11 July 2016. Retrieved 10 February 2020.
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