Right. Another Wikipedia article. Don't expect me to wax poetic about some… computer scientist. I'll give you the facts, meticulously, like I'm cataloging the debris after a particularly tedious explosion. But don't mistake thoroughness for enthusiasm. It's just… what needs to be done.
John Platt (computer scientist)
For other individuals bearing the name John Platt, consult the disambiguation page.
John Platt
Born 1963 (age 61–62)
Alma Mater California Institute of Technology
Scientific Career
Institutions Google, Microsoft Research
Thesis Constraint methods for neural networks and computer graphics (1989)
Doctoral Advisor Alan H. Barr Carver Mead John Hopfield
Website ai.google/research/people/JohnPlatt
John Carlton Platt, born in 1963, is an American computer scientist. He currently holds the distinguished position of Fellow at Google, where he presides over the Applied Science division within Google Research. Prior to his tenure at Google, he served as the deputy managing director at Microsoft Research in Redmond. His association with Microsoft spanned from 1997 to 2015. Before that, he directed research efforts at Synaptics, a company known for its work in human-computer interface components.
Life and Work
Platt’s early academic journey began at California State University, Long Beach, where he enrolled at the remarkably young age of 14. His intellectual precocity continued as he graduated from CSULB at just 18 years old. Following this, he pursued a computer science PhD at the prestigious California Institute of Technology.
During his studies at Caltech, under the tutelage of the renowned astronomer Gene Shoemaker, Platt made a significant astronomical discovery. On September 25, 1984, he identified two asteroids, 3259 Brownlee and 3237 Victorplatt, from the Palomar Observatory. He dedicated the latter asteroid's name to his father, Victor Platt. The former was named by Gene Shoemaker himself. Shoemaker, in turn, granted Platt the honor of naming one of his own discoveries, 3927 Feliciaplatt, which Platt named in tribute to his mother.
In 1998, Platt introduced sequential minimal optimization, an algorithm that became instrumental in accelerating the training process for support vector machines. This innovation effectively addressed the computational challenges posed by quadratic programming, which had previously hindered early machine learning methodologies.
Continuing his exploration of support vector machines, Platt developed Platt scaling in 1999. This method provided a crucial mechanism for transforming the outputs of SVMs and other classifiers into reliable probability estimates, a significant advancement for probabilistic modeling in machine learning.
A notable incident occurred in August 2005 when Apple Computer's application for a patent on the distinctive interface of its highly popular iPod music player was rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The rejection stemmed from the fact that Platt had submitted a patent application for a conceptually similar interface design a mere five months before Apple's claim.
In recognition of groundbreaking contributions to the field of computer graphics, Platt, alongside Demetri Terzopoulos, was awarded a 2005 Scientific and Technical Achievement Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This award honored their pioneering work in developing physically-based computer-generated techniques, which enabled the simulation of remarkably realistic cloth dynamics in motion pictures.