The Richard A. Laing papers contain correspondence, publications, teaching materials, and research notes from Laing's investigations into biological modeling, automata theory, and artificial intelligence. The papers are divided into five main series which document his professional career: Articles, Biographical Materials, Correspondence, Research, and Teaching.
Richard A. Laing was born on March 20, 1927 in New York, NY. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Michigan in 1950 and 1953 respectively, and his PhD from SUNY Binghamton in 1977. He was a researcher with the University of Michigan, working as a Research Assistant with the Willow Run Laboratories from 1954-1957, and in various research capacities with the Logic of Computers Group (LoCG). His involvement with the LoCG was his primary professional activity at the University of Michigan.
The Logic of Computers Group at the University of Michigan was established in 1956 as an informal group of faculty members from various departments who were interested in studying the logical formalisms related to computers and natural systems. The group was directed by philosophy professor Arthur Burks and early on worked out of the Operations Research Department of the Engineering Research Institute. In 1957, Burks and Gordon Peterson, of the Phonetics Laboratory in the Department of Speech, petitioned the graduate school, and along with five other professors were constituted a committee with power to award advanced graduate degrees in "Communications Sciences." The program was chaired by Peterson until it achieved departmental status in 1965. After a year under an interim chairman, Burks chaired the "Computer and Communications Sciences" Department until 1971. The LoCG was an important component of both the early program and, later, the department. Although it worked out of its own computing center and was funded entirely by grants from governmental agencies, it provided the department with faculty expertise and produced a large percentage of the departmental PhDs.
Apart from his involvement at the University of Michigan, Laing was also a participant in other research ventures, including the NASA Summer Study for the Advanced Automation for Space Missions in 1980, and the University of Oregon Machines and Behavior program in 1981. He was also a professor of Literature at Ching Yi College in Taichung, Taiwan, in 1964.
Laing's scientific research interests centered around the interplay of computers and biological systems. His technical writings dealt with the sociological aspects of computer mechanization, as well as the principles of artificial intelligence, automata and computability theory and biological modeling.
Laing published extensively in a variety of scholarly journals in the biological and computer sciences, including the Journal of Cybernetics, the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and Synthese. Apart from his scholarly writing, Laing was also an avid author of fiction, and winner of the University of Michigan Hopwood Award for Creative Writing in 1953.
