Dear Mr. Chung:

I attach a copy of the English version of the foreword to MOML. The first sentence of the last paragraph, the one that names my graduate students, Zhang, Shen, and Cao, is missing, and must have been added in proof. I don't know why it doesn't include Qin Yu Lin the other translator, who was also a doctoral student -- probably because he is older than the others, and doesn't consider himself a "young man." Or perhaps they just wanted to match the three friends in the Kongsi quote.

Cordially,

Herbert A. Simon

Foreword

I am greatly pleased and honored that my autobiography, Models of my Life, will now be available in the Chinese language, and am deeply grateful to the translators, Cao Nanyan and Qin Yulin (with the help of Wu Wenfang), for their labors. My many visits to China, beginning in 1972, shortly after the visit of President Nixon, have given me and my wife Dorothea a deep affection for China and its people, and provided us with many pleasant and valued memories of our experiences in your country. We have observed a period of enormous change and progress in Chinese society, and in the ability of the Chinese economy to meet the needs of the people and to offer continuing improvement in their lives and the lives of their children. Most important, we have had an opportunity, in however small a way, to participate in some of these changes. I was immensely gratified when my bonds with the Chinese people were further sealed by my election, two years ago, as a Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

A particularly valued aspect of my Chinese experience has been the opportunity to work with scientists in the Psychology Section of the Academy, carrying out research of common interest on the theory of human memory and on the cognitive processes involved in learning. I will not try to mention here the names of all of those with whom I collaborated in these projects, but I must mention Jing Qichen, who has been my principal mentor throughout my Chinese experience and my very good friend and colleague; and Zhu Xinming, who has been the organizer and leader of the exciting project of building, on the foundations of modern cognitive theory, a new, and very effective, curriculum for middle-school algebra and geometry in Chinese schools, and who became a close friend during the year he and his wife visited Pittsburgh while we worked together on the theoretical and experimental foundations of the curriculum.

I have had the good fortune to live through the years of the birth of the modern electronic computer and of the field of artificial intelligence to which it gave rise; and a large part of my story is the story of those exciting years. My chief hope for this autobiography is that it may give young people considering a career in science, or just entering such a career, some picture of the excitement of life in science. Of course much of the picture it paints refers to years long past, and to a land that is very far from China; But the urge that a scientist feels to explore the unknown is not peculiar to any time or to any special part of the globe. In whatever century and whatever land we spend our lives, we can respond to that urge and experience the satisfactions of finding new ideas and new things of value to humanity.

And so to my friends and readers, I repeat the words of Confucius [Analects, Book VII, Chapter 21], "If three of us are walking together, there will surely be a teacher for me. [San ren xing bi you wo shi]"

P.S. Mr. Cheng: You asked about the English names of my Chinese friends. They all use their Chinese names in the U.S. --- with the order reversed, of course, to put family name last: e.g., "Weimin Shen." And I believe they all use the Pinyin spelling.