Arthur Frederick Parker-Rhodes (21 November 1914 – 2 March 1987) was an English

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, plant pathologist, computer scientist, mathematician, mystic, and mycologist, who also introduced original theories in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

Background & education

Arthur Frederick Parker-Rhodes was born in Newington,

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

on 21 November 1914. He was educated at Marlborough College and Magdalene College, Cambridge, from where he graduated in 1934 and subsequently received his PhD. Being of independent means, he was able to pursue a variety of interests. He married author and political activist Damaris Parker-Rhodes and the couple earned a reputation as " bohemians" and eccentrics. They were both members of the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

( Klaus Fuchs stayed with them in Cambridge,

Alan Nunn May Alan Nunn May (sometimes Allan) (2 May 1911 – 12 January 2003) was a British physicist and a confessed and convicted Soviet spy who supplied secrets of British and American atomic research to the Soviet Union during World War II. Early li ...

was a local friend), they became disillusioned with communism and in 1948 joined the Society of Friends. They had three boys (one of whom died aged 12) and a daughter, Oriole.

Plant pathology and mycology

During the Second World War, Parker-Rhodes worked as a plant pathologist at

Long Ashton Research Station Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) was an agricultural and horticultural government-funded research centre located in the village of Long Ashton near Bristol, UK. It was created in 1903 to study and improve the West Country cider industry and ...

from where he published a series of research papers on the mechanism of fungicidal actions. His personal interest, however, was in the larger fungi, particularly

agarics An agaric () is a type of fungus fruiting body characterized by the presence of a pileus (cap) that is clearly differentiated from the stipe (stalk), with lamellae (gills) on the underside of the pileus. In the UK, agarics are called "mushrooms ...

(mushrooms and toadstools), and he was a familiar figure at forays of the

British Mycological Society The British Mycological Society is a learned society established in 1896 to promote the study of fungi. Formation The British Mycological Society (BMS) was formed by the combined efforts of two local societies: the Woolhope Naturalists' Field ...

in the 1940s and 1950s. He even published a statistical survey of these forays. For nearly 30 years Parker-Rhodes tutored a course on fungi at the

Flatford Mill Flatford Mill is a Grade I listed watermill on the River Stour at Flatford in East Bergholt, Suffolk, England. According to the date-stone the mill was built in 1733, but some of the structure may be earlier. Attached to the mill is a 17th-c ...

Field Studies Centre in Suffolk and, in 1950, published a popular book, ''Fungi, friends and foes''. Subsequently, he produced papers studying the kinetics of fairy rings and a series surveying the larger fungi of

Skokholm Skokholm () or Skokholm Island is an island off the coast of Pembrokeshire, Wales, south of the neighbouring island of Skomer. The surrounding waters are a marine reserve and all are part of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Both islands ...

, an island off the western coast of

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. He described several taxa new to science, including the species now known as ''Trechispora clanculare'' (Park.-Rhodes) K.H. Larss. which he found in a puffin burrow.

Mathematical linguistics and computer science

Parker-Rhodes was an accomplished

and was able to read at least 23 languages, claiming that they became "easier after the first half-dozen". He was introduced to Chinese and formal linguistic syntax by

Michael Halliday Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descri ...

at Cambridge. Parker-Rhodes was also a mathematician, with a particular interest in statistics and applications of

lattice theory A lattice is an abstract structure studied in the mathematical subdisciplines of order theory and abstract algebra. It consists of a partially ordered set in which every pair of elements has a unique supremum (also called a least upper bou ...

. Both these areas of expertise were of use to him when he joined the

Cambridge Language Research Unit Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge became ...

, an independent research centre established in 1955 by

Margaret Masterman Margaret Masterman (4 May 1910 – 1 April 1986) was a British linguist and philosopher, most known for her pioneering work in the field of computational linguistics and especially machine translation. She founded the Cambridge Language R ...

. The unit was said to house "an extraordinary collection of eccentrics" engaged in research on language and computing, including information retrieval. Parker-Rhodes' colleagues at CLRU included

Roger Needham Roger Michael Needham (9 February 1935 – 1 March 2003) was a British computer scientist. Early life and education Needham was born in Birmingham, England, the only child of Phyllis Mary, ''née'' Baker (''c''.1904–1976) and Leonard Wi ...

Karen Spärck Jones Karen Sparck Jones is a computer science researcher and innovator who pioneered the search engine algorithm known as inverse document frequency (IDF). While many early information scientists and computer engineers were focused on developing progr ...

Ted Bastin Edward William "Ted" Bastin (8 January 1926 – 15 October 2011) was a physicist and mathematician who held doctorate degrees in mathematics from Queen Mary College, London University and physics from King's College, Cambridge, to which he won a ...

, Stuart Linney, and

Yorick Wilks Yorick Wilks FBCS (born 27 October 1939), a British computer scientist, is emeritus professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield, visiting professor of artificial intelligence at Gresham College (a post created especiall ...

. Parker-Rhodes was "an original thinker in information retrieval,

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistr ...

and computational linguistics." He wrote A Sequential Logic for Information Structuring in "Mathematics of a Hierarchy of Brouwerian Operations" with Yorick Wilks (Fort Belvoir Defense Technical Information Center 01 MAY 1965). Parker-Rhodes also co-authored papers with Needham on the "theory of clumps" in relation to information retrieval and computational linguistics. He wrote a book on language structure and the logic of descriptions, ''Inferential Semantics'', published in 1978. The work analyzes sentences and longer passages into mathematical lattices (the kind in

Lattice Theory A lattice is an abstract structure studied in the mathematical subdisciplines of order theory and abstract algebra. It consists of a partially ordered set in which every pair of elements has a unique supremum (also called a least upper bou ...

, not

crystal lattices In geometry and crystallography, a Bravais lattice, named after , is an infinite array of discrete points generated by a set of discrete translation operations described in three dimensional space by : \mathbf = n_1 \mathbf_1 + n_2 \mathbf_2 + n_ ...

) which are

semantic networks A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, ...

. These are inferred not only from sentence syntax but also from grammatical focus and sometimes prosody. Each node the network is a concept in one or more structured conceptual dimensions (called ''base domains'', which are also lattice structures); this places a description into a resulting abstract lattice of possible descriptions, ordered from general to specific. This structure can be used for automated inference in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

and

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates t ...

. He factors some of the dimensions (base domains, like a quantifier lattice, a (deep) case lattice, et al.) into sublattice-factors. Division of the lattice of possible descriptions into factors acts to divide-and-conquer the abstract lattice of all possible descriptions into simpler, independent semantic "factors" or "dimensions". His ''Times'' obituarist, Ted Bastin, says of Parker-Rhodes' personality and scientific contribution: "One must say, in sum, that Parker-Rhodes leaves us with an enigma – a situation to which he brought his characteristic gentle and slightly amused acquiescence.".

Spiritual and other writings

Parker-Rhodes influenced mathematical metaphysics with his book relating to the Combinatorial Hierarchy's remarkable correspondences to the dimensionless scaling laws of physics. His pamphlet, ''Wholesight: The Spirit Quest'' (1978), that explored mythical tales and parables in an attempt to bring science and religion together. He also produced a long poem, ''The Myth of the Rock'', of a spiritual nature. His daughter, Oriole Parker-Rhodes, has electronically published some of the stories he told to his children, entitled ''Tales from the Sink''. That and ''The Myth of the Rock'' are available free online at Archive.org. The library of the Society of Friends in London holds a typescript of ''The Wheel of Creation : An essay in Wholesight, towards a coherent model of the place of mankind in the cosmos'' "The wheel of Creation" – found in Catalogue of the Library of the Society of Friends
The catalogue also lists a number of contributions by Frederick Parker-Rhodes to ''The Friends Quarterly''. He wrote a Key to the British

basidiomycetes Basidiomycota () is one of two large divisions that, together with the Ascomycota, constitute the subkingdom Dikarya (often referred to as the "higher fungi") within the kingdom Fungi. Members are known as basidiomycetes. More specifically, Ba ...

which is held by the library at the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...

Selected scientific publications

*Parker-Rhodes, A.F. (1949)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. II. Genetical implications of spores measurement in two agarics".
''New Phytologist'' 48 (2): 382–389. *________________. (1950). ''Fungi-friends and Foes''. 140 pp. UK, London. *________________. (1950). "The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. III. Genetic isolation in ''Panaeolus papilionaceous''". ''New Phytologist'' 49: 328–334. *________________. (1950)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. IV. A case of hybridization in ''Psilocybe'' (''Deconica'')".
''New Phytologist'' 49 (3): 335–343. *________________. (1951)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. V. An elementary theory of anemophilous dissemination".
''New Phytologist'' 50 (1): 84–97. *________________. (1951)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. VII. Some floristic and ecological calculations".
''New Phytologist'' 50 (2): 227–243. *________________. (1951)

''Transactions of the British Mycological Society'' 34 (3): 360–367. *________________. (1952)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. VIII. Taxonomic distributions".
(PDF) ''New Phytologist'' 51 (2): 216–228. *________________. (1953)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. IX. Response to meteorological conditions".
''New Phytologist'' 52 (1): 14–21. *________________. (1953)
"The Basidiomycetes of Thetford Chase. I. Correlation with age of plantation".
''New Phytologist'' 52 (1): 65–70. *________________. (1953)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. X. Population densities".
(PDF) ''New Phytologist'' 52 (3): 273–291. *________________. (1954)
"The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. XI. Intramycelial variation in ''Hygrocybe turunda'' var. ''lepida''".
(PDF) ''New Phytologist'' 53 (1): 92–98. *________________. (1954)

''Transactions of the British Mycological Society'' 37 (3): 314–320. *________________. (1954)

''Transactions of the British Mycological Society'' 37 (4): 324–342. *________________. (1955). "The Basidiomycetes of Skokholm Island. XII. Correlation with the chief plant associations". ''New Phytologist'' 54 (2): 259–276. *________________. (1955)

''Transactions of the British Mycological Society'' 38 (2): 173. *________________. (1955)

''Transactions of the British Mycological Society'' 38 (3): 283–290. *________________. (1955)

''Transactions of the British Mycological Society'' 38 (4): 366–368. *________________. (1956)
"Distribution of fungi in a small wood".
(PDF) ''Annals of Botany London, N.S.'' 20 (78): 251–264. *________________. (1979). ''Handbook with Keys for the Identification of the Tachycarpic Hymenomycetidae, Namely All the Toadstools Hitherto Found in the British Isles''. 234 pp. UK; A.F. Parker-Rhodes.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Parker-Rhodes, Frederick British computer scientists British mycologists British phytopathologists 1914 births 1987 deaths Linguists from the United Kingdom English Quakers People educated at Marlborough College Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge 20th-century British botanists 20th-century British mathematicians 20th-century English medical doctors 20th-century British scientists 20th-century linguists 20th-century Quakers 20th-century agronomists