Feigenbaum received his B.S., 1956, and his Ph.D., 1959, in electrical engineering from Carnegie Institute of Technology. He completed a Fulbright Fellowship at the National Physics Laboratory and in 1960 went to the University of California, Berkeley, to teach in the School of Business Administration. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1965 in the Dept. of Computer Science; he served as Director of the Stanford Computation Center from 1965 to 1968 and as chairman of the Department from 1976 to 1981. Feigenbaum is a leading national figure in artificial intelligence and has developed computer resources for interactive research between medical and scientific collaborators on a national and global scale.

The materials in the collection primarily concern his work in artificial intelligence at Stanford University and includes administrative files, correspondence, project files, trip files, proposals, reports, reprints, Artificial Intelligence Lab memos, audio tapes, video tapes, and files on computer programs, mainly DENDRAL, MOLGEN, EPAM, and SUMEX.