Richard E. Korf

Richard Earl Korf is an American computer scientist whose research in artificial intelligence has focused on heuristic search methods, including the invention of iterative deepening depth-first search and iterative deepening A*, often using puzzles as test cases for his algorithms. In 1997, he wrote the first computer program that could optimally solve the Rubik's Cube puzzle. He is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).