# Roger Schank Roger Schank was an American AI theorist and cognitive psychologist who pioneered conceptual dependency theory and case-based reasoning in natural language understanding, and later became an educational reformer and entrepreneur. Roger Carl Schank (March 12, 1946 – January 29, 2023) was an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur. Beginning in the late 1960s, he pioneered conceptual dependency theory within the context of natural language understanding and case-based reasoning, both of which challenged cognitivist views of memory and reasoning. He began his career teaching at Yale University and Stanford University. In 1989, Schank was granted $30 million in a ten-year commitment to his research and development by Andersen Consulting, through which he founded the Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS) at Northwestern University in Chicago. Schank's work bridged [artificial-intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) and cognitive psychology, influencing subsequent generations of researchers in natural language processing and machine learning. His later career focused on educational reform, advocating for technology-driven, experiential learning methods. ## Early Life and Education Schank was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1946, and attended Stuyvesant High School. He studied mathematics at [carnegie-mellon-university](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/carnegie-mellon-university) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for his undergraduate degree, and later earned a PhD in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. His academic path combined formal mathematics with linguistic theory, laying the groundwork for his later computational models of language. ## Academic Career Schank held faculty positions at [Stanford University](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/stanford-ai-lab) and then at Yale University. In 1974, he became professor of computer science and psychology at Yale. In 1981, he was appointed Chairman of Computer Science at Yale and director of the Yale Artificial Intelligence Project, where he led a vibrant research group. In 1989, Schank received a $30 million, ten-year commitment from Andersen Consulting, enabling him to leave Yale and establish the Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS) at Northwestern University in Chicago, bringing 25 of his Yale colleagues. ILS attracted corporate sponsors such as IBM and Ameritech, as well as government sponsors including the U.S. Army, EPA, and the National Guard, focusing on educational software development, especially for employee training. ILS was later absorbed by the School of Education as a separate department. When [Carnegie Mellon University](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/carnegie-mellon-university)'s Silicon Valley campus was established in 2002, Schank served as Chief Educational Officer. He was a Founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in 1990. ## Contributions to Artificial Intelligence Schank's most significant contributions came in the late 1960s with the introduction of conceptual dependency theory, a framework for representing the meaning of natural language sentences in a way that could be processed by computers. This model, partly based on the work of Sydney Lamb, was extensively used by Schank's students at Yale, including Robert Wilensky, Wendy Lehnert, and Janet Kolodner, in a series of natural language processing systems. Case-based reasoning (CBR), another of Schank's key ideas, emerged from his model of dynamic memory. CBR posits that reasoning involves retrieving and adapting past experiences rather than applying abstract rules. This approach became the basis for early CBR systems such as Janet Kolodner's CYRUS and Michael Lebowitz's IPP. In the 1980s, other schools of CBR and allied fields developed, exploring topics like legal reasoning and memory-based reasoning on massively parallel machines. The 1990s saw growing interest, with the establishment of the International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning in 1995 and various regional workshops. CBR technology led to several successful deployed systems, including Lockheed's CLAVIER for laying out composite parts in industrial ovens, and help desk applications like the Compaq SMART system. CBR also found applications in health sciences. ## Entrepreneurship Schank was among the first to capitalize on the expected AI boom. In 1979, while at Yale, he founded Cognitive Systems, a company that went public in 1986. He resigned as chairman and chief executive in 1988 for personal reasons but remained as a board member and advisor. In 1994, Schank founded Cognitive Arts Corporation (originally Learning Sciences Corporation) to market software developed at ILS, leading it until its sale in 2003. In 2001, he founded Socratic Arts, a company selling e-learning software to businesses and schools. From 2005 to 2007, he served as chief learning officer of Trump University. In 2008, Schank built a story-centered curriculum (SCC) at the Business Engineering School of La Salle International Graduate School of Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, designed to teach MBA students to launch businesses or enter the workforce. In 2012, he founded XTOL (Experiential Training Online), which designs learn-by-doing experiential short courses for universities, corporations, and professional organizations, as well as Master's programs in partnership with degree-granting universities worldwide. ## Educational Reform Schank believed the educational system was fundamentally broken and that software would need to replace conventional teaching methods. To this end, he founded Engines for Education in 2001, a not-for-profit organization that designs and implements curricula for primary and secondary schools and hosts the Virtual International Science and Technology Academy (VISTA). His educational philosophy emphasized learning by doing and story-centered curricula, which he detailed in works such as *Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools* (2011). ## Personal Life and Death Schank was married three times. His first marriage, to Diane Levine, with whom he had two children, ended in divorce after 26 years. He later married Annie Payeur Schank twice - first in 2002, and then, after divorcing in 2011, they remarried around 2012. Schank had homes in Palm Beach, Florida and rural Quebec. In Florida, he was a neighbor of Jeffrey Epstein and attended an artificial intelligence conference sponsored by Epstein on his island in 2002, six years before Epstein was convicted of sex offenses in 2008. After the conviction, Schank showed public support for him. Epstein files released in 2026 contained emails from Schank that are widely considered deeply misogynist. Schank frequently asserted that women lacked intelligence, writing, "this is why I lost interest in pussy; I knew I could have any girl I wanted on my terms; done." The pair also regularly disparaged the intelligence of other experts in their correspondence, and Schank repeatedly used a racial slur when referring to Black experts. Schank died on January 29, 2023. ## Selected Works Schank authored numerous books and articles. Notable works include: - *Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools* (2011) - *The Future of Decision Making: How Revolutionary Software Can Improve the Ability to Decide* (2010, with Dimitris Lyras and Elliot Soloway) - *Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training: Perspectives and Guidance for the Enlightened Trainer* (2005) - *Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane* (2001) - *Dynamic Memory Revisited* (1999) - *Virtual Learning* (1997) These works reflect his dual interests in AI and education, often arguing for the transformative potential of technology in learning. --- Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/roger-schank License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) Last updated: 2026-09-08T15:34:56.934777+00:00