>From today's AP wire: --- cut here ---
Donald Michie and Anne McLaren LONDON (AP) -- British artificial intelligence expert, Donald Michie, and an ex-wife, leading geneticist Dame Anne McLaren, have died in a car crash. Michie, 84, and McLaren, 80, were killed Saturday when their car veered off a highway while they were traveling from Cambridge to their home in London, said their son, Jonathan Michie. Michie was a pioneering artificial intelligence researcher who worked as part of the British code-breaking group at Bletchley Park during World War II. He contributed to the effort to solve Tunny, a German teleprinter cipher. He was appointed director of the University of Edinburgh's Department of Machine Intelligence and Perception when it was established in 1966 and was founder and editor-in-chief of the Machine Intelligence publication series. His former wife, McLaren, with whom he remained close friends after their divorce in 1959, was a leading geneticist who became the first female officer of the Royal Society, holding the post of foreign secretary from 1991-1996. She was a member of an independent committee appointed by the government to investigate new reproductive technologies after the birth of the world's first test-tube baby here in 1978 and make recommendations on the freezing and storage of human embryos and their use in research. Queen Elizabeth II named her a dame commander of the British Empire in 1993 and she was a fellow of King's College and Christ College at the University of Cambridge. --- cut here --- -dan.
