Peter Norvig
About
Peter Norvig (born December 14, 1956) is an American computer scientist, Distinguished Education Fellow at Stanford’s Human‑Centered AI Institute, and Director of Research at Google, previously overseeing Google’s core search algorithms and broader research initiatives. He co-authored Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach—the leading AI textbook used at over 1,500 universities worldwide—and Paradigms of AI Programming, and authored influential essays such as “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data”. Before Google, he led the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames, earning the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award in 2001, and held roles at Junglee, Sun Microsystems Labs, USC, and UC Berkeley. A Fellow of AAAI, ACM, the California Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Norvig also pioneered AI education by teaching a 160,000‑student online AI class, helping launch MOOCs via Udacity and edX. Read more