Arthur Lee Samuel (December 5, 1901 – July 29, 1990) was an American pioneer in the field of computer gaming, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The Samuel Checkers-playing Program appears to be the world's first self-learning program, and as such a very early demonstration of the fundamental concept of artificial intelligence (AI). He was also a senior member in TeX community who devoted much time giving personal attention to the needs of users and wrote an early TeX manual in 1983.