Allen Newell (1927–1992) played a main role in shaping artificial intelligence (AI) as both a technological and psychological enterprise. Trained in physics and mathematics, and influenced by George Pólya’s work on heuristics, Newell turned to studying problem-solving as a cognitive process, later developed in collaboration with Herbert Simon. Their joint work, including the Logic Theorist and the formulation of the physical symbol system hypothesis, established the computational paradigm of mind central to cognitive science. Newell viewed AI as a means of explaining cognition through symbolic representations and rule-based processes, linking psychology and computer science under the information-processing model. His later work on cognitive architectures, notably SOAR, advanced the project of unifying theories of cognition and demonstrated his enduring pursuit of a general AI. Though symbolic AI has since evolved, Newell’s epistemological and methodological legacy continues to inform cognitive science and AI research.