Historical Bibliography Updated: June 16, 2026

Recursive functions of symbolic expressions and their computation by machine, Part 1.

MCCARTHY, John (1927 – 2011) jmc.stanford.edu

Publication Details

Communications of the ACM, 3, 184-195. 1960 CE.

The original paper on LISP, the first programming language designed for symbolic computation, which made the development of artificial intelligence programming possible. Part 2 was never published. Digital text from jmc.stanford.edu at this link.

Browse Tags

Diagnostics & Imaging
Physics, Math & Biomechanics

Thematic Classifications

Artificial Intelligence in Medicine COMPUTING/MATHEMATICS in Medicine & Biology › Computing / Mathematics in Medicine & Biology

Catalog Metadata	Reference Information
Entry Number	#12654
Permanent Link	https://staging.historyofmedicine.com/entry/14898
Author Bio Link	jmc.stanford.edu ↗
External URL	recursive-functions-of-symbolic-expressions-and-their-computation-by-machine-part-1

Geographic Context

Mentioned in annotation: Stanford, CA