Yann LeCun
French-American AI pioneer who invented convolutional neural networks
- Age
- 67 yrs
- Birthday in 245 days
- Works listed
- 2
- Paper, Review article
- Honours
- 4
- Most recent 2025
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Yann LeCun is a French-American computer scientist who developed convolutional neural networks, the technology behind modern image recognition. He was the founding director of Facebook AI Research and Meta’s chief AI scientist, and shared the 2018 Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.
Biography
Education
LeCun studied at ESIEE Paris and earned his PhD at Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1987, proposing an early form of backpropagation. He was a postdoctoral researcher with Geoffrey Hinton in Toronto.
Convolutional networks
At Bell Labs from 1988 he developed convolutional neural networks, which learn to recognise patterns using layers of filters inspired by the visual cortex. His LeNet system read handwritten numbers on cheques and was used by banks in the 1990s.
Facebook AI Research
LeCun became a professor at New York University in 2003. In 2013 Mark Zuckerberg hired him to found Facebook AI Research (FAIR), which released open tools such as PyTorch and the Llama language models. He served as Meta’s chief AI scientist.
Views on AI
LeCun argues that current large language models will not reach human-level intelligence and promotes “world models” that learn from video and interaction. He is a prominent sceptic of claims that AI poses an existential threat. In December 2025 he left Meta and co-founded Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs to pursue this approach.
Timeline
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1959
Born in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France
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1987
PhD in Paris
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1988
Joins Bell Labs
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1989
Convolutional network reads handwritten digits
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1998
LeNet-5 paper
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2003
Professor at NYU
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2013
Founds Facebook AI Research
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2018
Turing Award
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2025
Queen Elizabeth Prize; co-founds Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs
Notable works
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1998
Gradient-Based Learning Applied to Document Recognition Paper
Introduced LeNet-5.
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2015
Deep learning Review article
Nature, with Bengio and Hinton.
Awards and honours
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Turing Award
2018
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Knight of the Legion of Honour
2020
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Princess of Asturias Award
2022
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Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering
2025
Did you know?
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1
The MNIST handwritten-digit dataset he helped create is a classic benchmark.
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2
He is an active and outspoken user of social media.
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3
He enjoys building model aircraft and playing jazz.
Connections
Related people
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Geoffrey Hinton
Science · “Godfather of AI” and Nobel laureate who made neural networks work
Turing Award co-recipient and mentor
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Yoshua Bengio
Science · Canadian deep-learning pioneer and one of the “godfathers of AI”
Turing Award co-recipient
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Mark Zuckerberg
Technology · Co-founder and CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta
Hired him to found FAIR
Frequently asked
Who is Yann LeCun?
Yann LeCun is a French-American computer scientist who developed convolutional neural networks, the technology behind modern image recognition. He was the founding director of Facebook AI Research and Meta’s chief AI scientist, and shared the 2018 Turing Award with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.
How old is Yann LeCun?
Yann LeCun is 67 years old, born on 8 July 1959 in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France.
Where is Yann LeCun from?
Yann LeCun was born in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France.
What is Yann LeCun known for?
Yann LeCun is best known for Convolutional neural networks; LeNet; Meta’s AI research chief; Turing Award 2018.
What awards has Yann LeCun received?
Notable honours include Turing Award (2018), Knight of the Legion of Honour (2020), Princess of Asturias Award (2022), Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering (2025).
References
- Yann LeCun — Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Yann LeCun — Hindi Wikipedia. Wikipedia (Hindi). Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Official website. yann.lecun.com. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
- Yann LeCun (Q3571662) — structured data. Wikidata. Retrieved 4 November 2026.
Includes material from the Wikipedia article “Yann LeCun”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. That text is available under the same licence. Learn more
External links
About this profile
- Researched by the TrackFame editorial team; reviewed by Sanjay Sokal under our editorial policy
- First published 4 November 2026
- Last updated
Cite this page
“Yann LeCun.” TrackFame, last updated 5 November 2026. https://trackfame.com/person/yann-lecun
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