birth_place fields workplaces birth_date article_title name alma_mater
oklahoma city , oklahoma electrical engineering mit 1938 william a. martin
 william a. martin mit
william a. martin

william a. martin -lrb- 1938-1981 -rrb- was a computer scientist from oklahoma city , oklahoma .
after graduating from northwest classen high school , where he was a state wrestling champion , he attended mit where he received a bachelor 's degree -lrb- 1960 -rrb- , master 's -lrb- 1962 -rrb- and a ph.d. -lrb- 1967 -rrb- in electrical engineering .
while obtaining those degrees , he worked as a teaching assistant at mit -lrb- beginning in 1960 -rrb- .
he became an assistant professor in 1968 and was promoted to associate professor of electrical engineering in 1972 .
in 1975 , he received academic tenure .
he held a joint appointment at the mit sloan school of management .
his research pulled him towards the project mac , which became the laboratory for computer science and the artificial intelligence laboratory , where he researched expert systems .
after finishing a ph.d. dissertation on symbolic mathematics , martin co-founded the macsyma project in 1968 and directed it until 1971 .
macsyma later became a successful commercial product and is also the core of the free maxima system .
martin then worked in automatic programming , knowledge representation and natural language processing .
