Marvin Minsky, who combined a scientist’s thirst for knowledge with a philosopher’s quest for truth as a pioneering explorer of artificial intelligence, work that helped inspire the creation of the personal computer and the Internet, died Sunday night in Boston. He was 88.

Lawrence R. Klein, who predicted America’s economic boom after World War II and who was awarded the 1980 Nobel in economic science for developing statistical models that are used to analyze and predict global economic trends, died Sunday at his home in Gladwyne, Pa. He was 93.