Language Log

It's possible that you don't know who Dennis Ritchie was. Even if you do, you should read some of his obituaries, and think about the ways in which he changed the world: Steve Lohr, "Dennis Ritchie, Trailblazer in Digital Era, Dies at 70", NYT; Elizabeth Flock, "Dennis Ritchie, father of C programming language and Unix, dies at 70", Washington Post; Cade Metz, "Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On", Wired News; Mark Memmott, "Dennis Ritchie, C Programmer And Unix Co-Creator, Has Died", NPR.

Johnny Truant, commenting on that last piece, contributed a tribute that Dennis would have appreciated:

#include "stdio.h"
int main(void)
{
printf("goodbye, world\n");
return 0;
}

(Though everyone who knew Dennis, or who knows what he did for the world, would object to that return value.)

Max Mathews died yesterday morning.  For his 80th birthday in 2007, CCRMA's MaxFest described his contributions this way:

Fifty years ago, in 1957, at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Max Mathews demonstrated that the digital computer can be used as a fantastic new music instrument. He created a revolutionary software platform destined to form the basis of all contemporary digital musical systems (Music 1–Music 5).

His audacious ideas were driven by the belief that "any sound that the human ear can hear can be produced by a computer". Mathews's mastery of this new instrument revealed new musical horizons and sparked a burgeoning curiosity into the very nature of sound. His comprehension and elaboration made five decades of art and research possible, laying the groundwork for generations of electronic musicians to synthesize, record, and play music.

Today at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) as a Professor Emeritus he continues not only to educate students and colleagues, but also to guide and inspire with his constant inventiveness and pure musical pleasure.

Join us in honoring Max for two evenings of sound, celebration and discovery of his ideas, works, music, and writings.

[Update: a memorial page for Bill, to which people can contribute thoughts, pictures, etc., can be found here.]

It saddens me greatly to report that William F. Shipley passed away on January 20, 2011. He was 89 years old. Bill was my first linguistics professor, my first advisor and mentor, my first academic collaborator, and my dear, dear friend. I already miss him more than I am able to put into words.

Bill completed his dissertation under the direction of Mary Haas at UC Berkeley in 1959, a grammar of the Native California language Maidu (published in the University of California Publications in Linguistics series in 1964, with a dictionary and texts published in 1963). In 1966, he left an appointment at Berkeley to be among the very first faculty to participate in the big experiment that UC Santa Cruz was at the time, and he retired from UCSC in 1991.

From the Ohio State department's memorial page:

Ilse was born on January 31, 1922 in Tallinn, Estonia, but left Estonia as a refugee in 1944, fleeing the Soviet invasion of her homeland. She earned her first Ph.D., in Philology, from the University of Hamburg in 1948 and a second Ph.D., in Linguistics, from the University of Michigan in 1959. In 1963, Ilse joined the faculty at The Ohio State University. Ilse came to OSU from the University of Michigan, after receiving her Ph.D., and spending 1959-63 at the Communication Sciences Laboratory as Research Associate. At Ohio State, she divided her time between phonetics, historical linguistics, and administration, serving as Chair 1965-71, Acting Chair 1984-85, and again Chair 1985-87.  In fact, she was the Department's first Chair (1965-1971) when it was founded in 1965, after having spent two years in the Slavic Department. Professor Emeritus since 1987.

Ilse enjoyed a long and distinguished career.  She was the author, co-author or editor of 20 books, about 200 articles and over 100 reviews. Ilse was honored in many ways for her immense contributions to the field of linguistics. At The Ohio State University, she was awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor and received the University Distinguished Scholar Award, the university's highest recognition for scholarly achievement. She also held four honorary doctorates from Essex University, England (1977), the University of Lund, Sweden (1982), Tartu University, Estonia (1989), and The Ohio State University (1999). She was Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences since 1998, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1990, and Foreign Member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences (2008).

Arnold's news yesterday about Ilse Lehiste's passing was a sad coda to Christmas.  What a tremendous loss to the field of linguistics — Ilse's exuberant reactions to all things linguistic made her a joy to be around

News from Brian Joseph: our colleague and dear friend Ilse Lehiste, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Ohio State University, died on Christmas Day, of complications from pneumonia.

Back on September 15, when I posted the news of Fred Jelinek's death, I promised to say more when I'd had a chance to think about it. Then, a few days later, Robert Dale asked me to write an obituary for Fred to be published in the Computational Linguistics journal. The December 2010 issue is now out, and Fred's obituary is here.

Following Robert's suggestion, I aimed at a broad assessment of Fred's impact on the field, since CL recently published Fred's own detailed account of his professional life ("The Dawn of Statistical ASR and MT", CL 35(4):483-494 , 2009).

Following on the announcement of the death of my dear friend Ellen Prince (here), I'm now passing on three further death announcements from recent days: sociolinguist Faye Vaughn-Cooke and lexicographers Fred Mish and Sol Steinmetz.

A note from the Penn Linguistics Department, written by Gillian Sankoff and Tony Kroch:

It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our colleague Ellen F. Prince. Ellen died peacefully at home in Philadelphia on Sunday, October 24, after a long battle with cancer.

On October 1, Partha Niyogi died of brain cancer at the age of 43.  He was Louis Block Professor in Computer Science and Statistics at the University of Chicago, and on his web page, he tells us that

My research interests are generally in the field of artificial intelligence and specifically in pattern recognition and machine learning problems that arise in the computational study of human speech and language.

On September 30, 2010, a journalistic genre passed away: the mock obituary marking the purported demise of a linguistic phenomenon. According to the coroner's report, the cause of death was rampant overuse.

I can understand why Margalit Fox would want to give such prominence to Edwin Newman's two books on usage in her New York Times obituary for for the journalist, who died recently at 91. Newman retired from NBC more than 25 years ago, and people who remember him are likely to be hazier on his journalism than on his 1970's bestsellers Strictly Speaking and A Civil Tongue, which are still in print (though only in large type and audio editions appropriate to a public of advancing diopter). But I wish they had left me out of it.

Jason Eisner just forwarded to me this note from Nick Jones, the dean of the Engineering School at Johns Hopkins:

It is with great sadness that I am writing to share with you the news that a member of the Whiting School community, Fred Jelinek, passed away last night.