Steve Anderson, RIP
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Steven R. Anderson has passed away. Sally Thomason wrote today on Facebook:
Linguist friends, I am very sorry indeed to report that Steve (Stephen R.) Anderson died last night, October 13, after a diagnosis last month of aggressive stage 4 esophageal cancer. He died at home, peacefully and free of pain, surrounded by his loved ones. Steve was a giant in our field, with highly significant publications in phonology and morphology, among other areas (including, for instance, animal communication systems). He was a fellow of the AAAS and other prestigious organizations, and the only person, as far as I know (and certainly in recent decades), to serve two years as president of the Linguistic Society of America: he graciously accepted the burden of the second year when his elected successor was unable to serve.
I first met Steve at a conference in Poland in the late 1970s; later, we served together on various LSA committees, and I always enjoyed working with him and, in off-work hours, gossiping with him over drinks. One of the most memorable meals I ever ate was when he and I were both at a conference in Amsterdam, and he chose an Indonesian restaurant and ordered the food: spectacular. Our paths haven't crossed since we both retired and went in different directions (and, in my case at least, stopped flying off to conferences often), but I am sad to know that there is no longer any chance that our paths will cross in the future.
I met and interacted with Steve in the late 1960s, when I was an undergrad at Harvard and he was a grad student at MIT; and then again between 1972 and 1975, when I was a grad student at MIT and he was on the faculty at Harvard; and of course I've met and interacted with him many times since then, and learned a lot about morphophonology, morphosyntax, and science in general.
One interaction with Steve had a major effect on the course of my life. In 1975, shortly after Osamu Fujimura was hired at AT&T Bell Labs, he asked Steve to recommend a linguist who could program. Steve offered my name — there were few other people then fitting that description, maybe none — and so Bell Labs offered me a job, even though I was then in the spring of my third year of graduate school.
Steve was the one who told me about this, before Bell Labs did. And he persuaded me that it was a good idea, and also that it might be possible. So I managed to dream up a dissertation, and finish all the other requirements for the PhD in time to graduate at the end of the summer — and spent the next 15 years at Bell Labs, 1975 to 1990, during some of its glory days. Without Steve's intervention, who knows where I would have gone, and when…