Dear Woody:

	This is in response to your letter asking for my opinion of the
possible appointment of Slagle as a professor.

	In my opinion, he has the ability, the experience and the
research productivity to warrant such an appointment.  His book
\F1Artificial Intelligence\F0 and Nilsson's \F1Problem
Solving Methods in Artificial Intelligence\F0 are the two general
books on the subject worth reading.  His students Chang and Lee
have written a good book on theorem proving, so one can say that
Slagle is not only scholarly himself, but he encourages it in others.

	His thesis was first class, but I have not followed his
research since that time - mainly because he has gone into theorem
proving using resolution.  This field has gotten too technical for
me to follow in detail, especially as I have some vague ideas about
other approaches being perhaps better.

	I think that the idea of using his group as the nucleus of
an institute of computer science is quite tenable.  I have long
thought that the University of Texas has the potential of being the
next big AI center.  In fact, when NASA was discussing what to do
about AI, I suggested that they support a lab at Texas, but they decided
to do it in house at JPL which was probably a mistake.

					With Best Regards,