A Turing Award for artificial intelligence
The ACM gave the Turing Award to Marvin Minsky, the first time it went for work in artificial intelligence itself.
Why it matters
Formal recognition from the main professional body arrived in the same year the field began losing its funding.
The 1969 award cited Minsky's role in establishing the field and his work on knowledge representation. Perceptrons, by Minsky and Papert, appeared the same year, and the Lighthill report four years later. Recognition and retrenchment coincided.