Rumelhart was the first author of a highly cited paper from 1985 (co-authored by
Geoffrey Hinton and
Ronald J. Williams) that applied the
back-propagation algorithm to multi-layer neural networks. This work showed through experiments that such networks can learn useful
internal representations of data. The approach has been widely used for basic cognition researches (e.g., memory, visual recognition) and practical applications. The 1985 paper does not cite earlier publications of backpropagation, such as the 1974 dissertation of
Paul Werbos, as they did not know the earlier publications. In 1983, he showed it to
Terry Sejnowski, who tried it and found it to train much faster than
Boltzmann machines (developed in 1983). Geoffrey Hinton however did not accept backpropagation, preferring Boltzmann machines, only accepting backpropagation a year later. In the same year, Rumelhart also published
Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition with
James McClelland, which described their creation of computer simulations of
perceptrons, giving to computer scientists their first testable models of neural processing, and which is now regarded as a central text in the field of
cognitive science. The connectionism side debated the symbolic side, represented by
Jerry Fodor,
Gary Marcus,
Zenon Pylyshyn,
Steven Pinker, etc. The debate concerned whether neural networks or symbolic programs were adequate models for how English speakers can turn a verb into its past tense. Rumelhart's models of semantic cognition and specific knowledge in a diversity of learned domains using initially non-hierarchical neuron-like processing units continue to interest scientists in the fields of
artificial intelligence,
anthropology,
information science, and
decision science. In his honor, in 2000 the
Robert J. Glushko and Pamela Samuelson Foundation created the
David E. Rumelhart Prize for Contributions to the Theoretical Foundations of Human Cognition. A
Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Rumelhart as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with
John Garcia,
James J. Gibson,
Louis Leon Thurstone,
Margaret Floy Washburn, and
Robert S. Woodworth. ==References==