Professor Emeritus, George F. Luger

Department of Computer Science - FEC 2110
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131

luger@cs.unm.edu

George Luger has two master's degrees, the first in applied mathematics from Gonzaga University. His second MS is in pure mathematics from the University of Notre Dame. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973, with a dissertation focusing on the computational modeling of human problem-solving performance in the tradition of Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon, then at CMU.

George had a five-year appointment as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Artificial Intelligence of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In Edinburgh he worked on several early expert systems, participated in the development and testing of the Prolog computer language, and continued his research in the computational modeling of human problem-solving.

George joined the UNM Computer Science Department in 1979. At the University of New Mexico, he was also a Professor in the Psychology Department and co-founder the Cognitive Science program. He became a Professor in the Linguistics Departments, where he co-founded the Computational Linguistics program. He retired from UNM in 2013.

George's AI book, Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving (Pearson Education 2009) is now in its sixth edition. To obtain the software for Professor Luger's AI books, visit the URL address under the appropriate book cover below. For instructors using the sixth editions of his AI book, an Instructors Guide and sets of Power Point presentation slides are available from Pearson Education. Academic Press published his book Cognitive Science: The Science of Intelligent Systems in 1994. His edited collection of readings from the early creators of AI research is presented in Computation and Intelligence, published by AAAI and MIT Press in 1995.

George's latest AI text, Artificial Intelligence: Principles and Practice, with a 2025 copyright, is published by Springer Nature. Besides its presentation of current AI tools and techniques, the text has several chapters focused on the ethical uses of AI technology. The software supporting the book is available from the URL under its graphic and from the AI Algorithms, Data Structures, and Idioms book below.

George's book Knowing our World: An AI Perspective, published in 2021 by Springer Nature, takes a more philosophical perspective. It describes how the tools and techniques of modern AI, along with its philosophy of exploratory design and programming supports a fresh understanding of our ever-evolving world.

George's research support has come from NATO, the British Royal Society, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Transportation, NIH, and other agencies including the Smithsonian Institution. George has worked with the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories and has received research funding through, and consulted for, numerous private companies.

George's most recent National Science Foundation research was to build algorithms for probabilistic diagnostic reasoning. George and his students have developed stochastic models, mostly in an extended form of dynamic Bayesian networks, to model complex environments including the production of electric power with a sodium-cooled nuclear reactor. His students, especially Dan Pless and Carl Stern, have extended this work to create a first-order logic based software tool, based on a Judea Pearl inference algorithm, called Generalized Loopy Logic, available here.


Knowing our World:
An Artificial Intelligence Perspective
Springer Nature, 2021
Artificial Intelligence:
Principles and Practice
Springer Nature, 2025
Software sample code here.
Artificial Intelligence:
Structures and Strategies
for Complex Problem Solving
6th Edition web site
(includes sample code, Chapter One, table of contents)


Watch the videos of the 28 Class Lectures from "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" Course taught by Professor Luger
AI Algorithms, Data Structures, and Idioms
in Prolog, Lisp, and Java
Pearson Education, 2009
Preface, Chapter One,
Prolog Chapters
Lisp Chapters
Java Chapters
Master Programmer
Conclusion


Cognitive Science:
The Science of Intelligent Systems
Academic Press, 1994

George's PhD students include Chayan Chakrabarti, Paul DePalma, Sunny Fugate, Ben Gordon, Kshanti Greene, Bill Klein, Joseph Lewis, Linda Means, Dan Pless, Roshan Rommohan, Nakita Sakanenko, Jim Skinner, Carl Stern, and Bill Stubblefield. Many of their contributions can be found in the publications below.

Principal Publications

luger@cs.unm.edu,
505-277-3204