Margaret Boden

Margaret Ann Boden (26 November 1936 – 18 July 2025) was a British academic. She was a research professor of cognitive science in the department of informatics at the University of Sussex, where her work embraced the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.

Early life and education Margaret Ann Boden was born on 26 November 1936 in London. She was educated at the City of London School for Girls in the late 1940s and 1950s. At Newnham College, Cambridge, she took first class honours in medical sciences which she finished after 2 instead of 3 years in 1958, achieving the highest score across all Natural Sciences. In 1957, she studied the history of modern philosophy at the Cambridge Language Research Unit run by Margaret Masterman as her second degree, which she finished in 1959.

Career Boden was appointed lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham in 1959. She became a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University from 1962 to 1964. She then returned to Birmingham for a year before moving to a lectureship in philosophy and psychology at the University of Sussex in 1965, where she was appointed as reader, then professor in 1980. She was awarded a PhD degree in social psychology (with a specialism in cognitive studies) by Harvard in 1968.

She credited reading "Plans and the Structure of Behavior" by George A. Miller with giving her the realisation that computer programming approaches could be applied to the whole of psychology.

Boden became a fellow of the British Academy in 1983 and served as its vice president from 1989 to 1991. Boden was a member of the editorial board for The Rutherford Journal.

In 2001 Boden was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her services in the field of cognitive science. A PhD scholarship that is awarded annually by the department of informatics at the University of Sussex was named in her honour.

Media In October 2014 and January 2015, Boden was interviewed by Jim Al-Khalili on the BBC Radio Four programme The Life Scientific.

In February 2017, Boden, along with other researchers, participated in a debate organized by the British Academy on the readiness of humans to develop romantic relationships with robots.

Personal life and death Boden was married to John Spiers, a writer and publisher, from 1967 until 1981. They had a son and a daughter.

Boden had a fondness for the colour purple and the Cook Islands, spending vacations there for 30 years. AI: Its Nature and Future (2016),

Honours Boden was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2001 for "services to cognitive science". Fellow (and former vice-president) of the British Academy – and Chairman of their Philosophy Section until July 2002. Member of the Academia Europaea. Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI). Life Fellow of the UK's Society for Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour. Member of Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy. Former Vice-President (and Chairman of Council) of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. In April 2004 she was awarded an honorary degree by the Open University as Doctor of the University. In 2016 she was awarded the ISAL award for Lifetime Achievement in the field of Artificial Life. Honorary Fellow of the Cybernetics Society.