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Mr. K. E. Kitchen
Academic Staffing Office
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
UNITED KINGDOM
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Dear Mr. Kitchen:

	This is in response to your letter PWVH/LH/36/89, dated
July 13 concerning Vladimir Lifschitz.

	Lifschitz has been my closest colleague at Stanford for
about five years.  During this time he has become a leader in
both the mathematical aspects on nonmonotonic reasoning and in
its application to formalizing common sense knowledge in artificial
intelligence.  He is outstanding among the many good people working
on this recently popular mathematical subject.  However, the second
topic is more important, and he is one of the very few people doing
first rate work in this---probably the best of them.

	His lectures are extremely clear and well prepared.  His
personality is co-operative.

	He will have to adapt himself to the greater authority of
the professorial position and to holding his own among his fellow
professors.  I'm sure he will succeed at this.

	I will make every effort to make Stanford more attractive
to him, both by trying to get a professorship for him here and by
trying to get longer term commitments from the Government
agencies that support our research.

	However, I have to admit that his moving to Manchester would
also lead to more good people becoming involved in the important
work of developing common sense capability for computers.

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Sincerely,
John McCarthy
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