Yehoshua Bar-Hillel ( he, יהושע בר-הלל; 8 September 1915, in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

– 25 September 1975, in

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

) was an Israeli

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

, and

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 ...

. He was a pioneer in the fields of

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 ...

and

formal linguistics Formal linguistics is the branch of linguistics which uses applied mathematics, applied mathematical methods for the analysis of natural languages. Such methods include formal languages, formal grammars and first-order logical expressions. Formal li ...

Biography

Born Oscar Westreich in Vienna,

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

, he was raised in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. In 1933 he emigrated to

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

with the

Bnei Akiva Bnei Akiva ( he, בְּנֵי עֲקִיבָא, , "Children of Akiva") is the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with over 125,000 members in 42 countries. It was first established in Mandatory Palestine in 1929. History B ...

youth movement, and briefly joined the

kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...

Tirat Zvi Tirat Zvi ( he, טִירַת צְבִי, lit. ''Zvi Castle'') is a religious kibbutz in the Beit She'an Valley, ten kilometers south of the city of Beit She'an, Israel, just west of the Jordan River and the Israel-Jordan border. It falls under the ...

before settling in Jerusalem and marrying Shulamith. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he served in the

Jewish Brigade The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, more commonly known as the Jewish Brigade Group or Jewish Brigade, was a military formation of the British Army in the Second World War. It was formed in late 1944 and was recruited among Yishuv Jews from Manda ...

of the British Army. He fought with the

Haganah Haganah ( he, הַהֲגָנָה, lit. ''The Defence'') was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the ...

during the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had ...

, losing an eye. Bar-Hillel received his PhD in Philosophy from the

Hebrew University The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

where he also studied mathematics under

Abraham Fraenkel Abraham Fraenkel ( he, אברהם הלוי (אדולף) פרנקל; February 17, 1891 – October 15, 1965) was a German-born Israeli mathematician. He was an early Zionist and the first Dean of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ...

, with whom he eventually coauthored ''Foundations of Set Theory'' (1958, 1973). Bar-Hillel was a major disciple of

Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (; ; 18 May 1891 – 14 September 1970) was a German-language philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. He ...

, whose ''Logical Syntax of Language'' much influenced him. He began a correspondence with Carnap in the 1940s, which led to a 1950 post-doctorate under Carnap at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, and to his collaborating on Carnap's 1952 ''An Outline of the Theory of Semantic Information''. Bar-Hillel then took up a position at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, where he was the first academic to work full-time in the field of

. Bar-Hillel organised the first International Conference on Machine Translation in 1952. Later he expressed doubts that general-purpose fully automatic high-quality machine translation would ever be feasible. He was also a pioneer in the field of

information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...

. In 1953, Bar-Hillel joined the

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

department at the

, where he taught until his death at age 60. His teachings and writings strongly influenced an entire generation of Israeli philosophers and linguists, including

Asa Kasher Asa Kasher ( he, אסא כשר, born June 6, 1940) is an Israeli philosopher and linguist working as a Professor at Tel Aviv University. Biography Asa Kasher is the grandson of talmudist Menachem Mendel Kasher. He is noted for authorship of Isr ...

and

Avishai Margalit Avishai Margalit ( he, אבישי מרגלית, born 1939) is an Israeli professor emeritus in philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2006 to 2011, he served as the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study i ...

. In 1953, he founded a pioneering algebraic-computational linguistic group, and in 1961 he contributed to the proof of the

pumping lemma In the theory of formal languages, the pumping lemma may refer to: *Pumping lemma for regular languages, the fact that all sufficiently long strings in such a language have a substring that can be repeated arbitrarily many times, usually used to pro ...

for

context-free languages In formal language theory, a context-free language (CFL) is a language generated by a context-free grammar (CFG). Context-free languages have many applications in programming languages, in particular, most arithmetic expressions are generated by ...

(sometimes called the Bar-Hillel lemma). Bar-Hillel helped found the Hebrew University's department of

Philosophy of Science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

. From 1966 to 1969 Bar-Hillel presided over the Division for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science of the

International Union of History and Philosophy of Science The International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology is one of the members of the International Science Council (ISC). It was founded in 1955 by merging the ''International Union of History of Science'' (IUHS) and the ''Inter ...

. Bar-Hillel's daughter

Maya Bar-Hillel Maya Bar-Hillel ( he, מיה בר-הלל, born 1943) is a professor emeritus of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Known for her work on inaccuracies in human reasoning about probability, she has also studied decision theory in conn ...

is a

cognitive psychologist Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which he ...

at the

, known for her collaborations with

Amos Tversky Amos Nathan Tversky ( he, עמוס טברסקי; March 16, 1937 – June 2, 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his ...

and for her role in critiquing

Bible code The Bible code ( he, הצופן התנ"כי, ), also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of encoded words within a Hebrew text of the Torah that, according to proponents, has predicted significant historical events. The statistical like ...

study. His other daughter, Mira Bar-Hillel, is a freelance journalist who has worked for the London ''

Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

''. His granddaughter,

Gili Bar-Hillel Gili Bar-Hillel Semo ( he, גילי בר-הלל סמו; born Gili Bar-Hillel in 1974) is an English-Hebrew translator from Israel, best known for translating the '' Harry Potter'' series into Hebrew. Biography Bar-Hillel is the daughter of Maya B ...

, is the Hebrew translator of the

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...

series of books.

Related terms

Categorial grammar Categorial grammar is a family of formalisms in natural language syntax that share the central assumption that syntactic constituents combine as functions and arguments. Categorial grammar posits a close relationship between the syntax and semant ...

Indexical expression In semiotics, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy of language, indexicality is the phenomenon of a ''sign'' pointing to (or ''indexing'') some object in the context in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an index or, ...

Notes

Melby, Alan. The Possibility of Language (Amsterdam:Benjamins, 1995, 27-41)Appendix III of 'The present status of automatic translation of languages', Advances in Computers, vol.1 (1960), p.158-163. Reprinted in Y.Bar-Hillel: Language and information (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1964), p.174-179.

Select bibliography

* * * * * * * * *

References

External links

*
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel: A Philosopher's Contribution to Machine Translation
*
Bar-Hillel and Machine Translation: Then and Now.
"

''Time'' Magazine article from 1954. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bar Hillel, Yehoshua 1915 births 1975 deaths 20th-century Israeli mathematicians Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty Israeli Jews Jewish Brigade personnel Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to Mandatory Palestine Jewish philosophers Jewish scientists Linguists from Israel Machine translation researchers Mandatory Palestine military personnel of World War II Mathematical logicians Members of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Philosophers of language 20th-century linguists 20th-century Israeli philosophers Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty