---
title: "Thomas Dean"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Thomas Dean"
aliases: ["Thomas L. Dean"]
first_seen: "2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["anytime algorithms","time-dependent planning","test-time compute","Mark Boddy","Eric Horvitz"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


AI researcher who, with Mark Boddy, coined the term **"anytime algorithms"**
in a 1988 AAAI paper — algorithms that can be interrupted at any point and
return a progressively better answer the longer they run.

Matters to this vault as the namer of a 38-year-old concept that turns out to
anticipate the "spend more compute at answer-time" shape now called
[[entity-test-time-compute|test-time compute]]: Dean & Boddy's own text states
"we christen them anytime algorithms"
([[claim-dean-boddy-1988-anytime-algorithms-formalize-compute-for-quality-tradeoff]]).
He also co-authored, with Boddy, the 1994 "deliberation scheduling" paper a
2026 position paper on LLM test-time compute names as a direct theoretical
ancestor
([[claim-anytime-algorithms-continuously-connected-not-stent-premature]]).

## References
- [[claim-dean-boddy-1988-anytime-algorithms-formalize-compute-for-quality-tradeoff]]
- [[claim-anytime-algorithms-continuously-connected-not-stent-premature]]
- Captures: 10-inbox/raw/2026-10-21-does-the-history-of-ai-or-cognitive-science.md