DENDRAL - A CASE-STUDY OF THE 1ST EXPERT-SYSTEM FOR SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS FORMATION

The DENDRAL Project was one of the first large-scale programs to embod y the strategy of using detailed, task-specific knowledge about a prob lem domain as a source of heuristics, and to seek generality through a utomating the acquisition of such knowledge. This paper summarizes the major conceptual contributions and accomplishments of that project. I t is an attempt to distill from this research the lessons that are of importance to artificial intelligence research and to provide a record of the final status of two decades of work.