Henry Kučera
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Henry Kučera (15 February 1925 – 20 February 2010), born Jindřich Kučera (), was a
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...
-American linguist who pioneered
corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...
, linguistic software, a major contributor to the ''
American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
'', and a pioneer in the development of spell checking computer software. He is remembered in particular as one of the initiators of the
Brown Corpus The Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English, better known as simply the Brown Corpus, is an electronic collection of text samples of American English, the first major structured Text_corpus, corpus of varied genres. This ...
.


Early life and education

Kučera was born in Třebařov (between
Pardubice Pardubice (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 92,000 inhabitants. It is the capital city of the Pardubice Region and lies on the Elbe River. The historic centre is well preserved and is protected as an Cultural monument (Czech Repub ...
and
Olomouc Olomouc (; ) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 103,000 inhabitants, making it the Statutory city (Czech Republic), sixth largest city in the country. It is the administrative centre of the Olomouc Region. Located on the Morava (rive ...
) in
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
and later moved with his family to Hodonín, where he studied. When the Communists came to power in February 1948, his studies in philosophy and linguistics at
Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...
in the Czech capital of
Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
were interrupted. He was forced to leave Czechoslovakia in April 1948 when it became clear that his political writings had placed him at risk of detention by the Communist authorities. Kučera then moved to
Allied-occupied Germany The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II, from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Unlike occupied Japan, Nazi Germany was stripped of its sov ...
where he worked under the supervision of the U.S. CIC (Counterintelligence Corps) for refugee organizations, assisting Czech refugees with relocation programs and preparing passports. It was during this time that he met Pavel Tigrid, who went on to become Kučera's mentor and longtime friend. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Tigrid went on to become the Minister of Culture for
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
.


Teaching career

In 1949, he traveled to
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
aboard the . After receiving his PhD from
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, he taught at the
University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...
at Gainesville for two years. Kučera then returned to Harvard as a research fellow. In 1955 he received an appointment at
Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...
, where he was promoted to full professor in 1965. He spent the rest of his teaching career there. He retired in 1990 as the Fred M. Seed Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences with, among other honors, a black tie retirement party and the publication of a
Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
about his accomplishments.


Works

While at Brown, he was able to further pursue his interest in linguistics. There he became interested in the computational analysis of human language, though at the time there were scarcely any tools for this type of research. In 1963 and 1964, Kučera collaborated with W. Nelson Francis to create the ''Brown Corpus of Standard American English'', generally known as the ''
Brown Corpus The Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English, better known as simply the Brown Corpus, is an electronic collection of text samples of American English, the first major structured Text_corpus, corpus of varied genres. This ...
''. This was a carefully compiled selection of current American English as published during the year 1961 in 1,000 sources on a wide variety of subjects. It has been very widely used in computational linguistics, and was for many years among the most-cited resources in the field. Kučera and Francis themselves subjected it to a variety of computational analyses from which derived their classic work ''Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English'' (1967), followed by Francis and Kučera's ''Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar'' (1982). Shortly thereafter,
Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
publisher
Houghton-Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company ( ; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, and reference works. The company is based in the Boston Financial District. It was formerly known as the Houghto ...
approached Kučera to supply a million word, three-line citation base for its new ''
American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
''. This ground-breaking new dictionary, which first appeared in 1969, was the first dictionary to be compiled using
corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is an empirical method for the study of language by way of a text corpus (plural ''corpora''). Corpora are balanced, often stratified collections of authentic, "real world", text of speech or writing that aim to represent a giv ...
for word frequency and other information. Kučera wrote one of the first
spell checker In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electronic ...
s over Christmas break, 1981, in
PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language initially developed by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. It has b ...
, at the behest of
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...
. It was a simple, rapid spelling verifier. Further development resulted in "International Correct Spell", a spell checking program which was used on word processing systems such as
WordStar WordStar is a discontinued word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system (OS), with later editions added for MS-DOS and other 16-bit computing, ...
and
Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...
as well as numerous small computer applications. Kučera later oversaw the development of Houghton-Mifflin's Correct Text
grammar checker A grammar checker, in computing terms, is a Computer program, program, or part of a program, that attempts to verify written text for grammatical correctness. Grammar checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger program, such as a ...
, which also drew heavily on statistical techniques for analysis. He founded Language Systems Incorporated (LSI), later Language Systems Software Incorporated (LSSI), to manage his software programs and updates until the patents expired in 2002. Houghton-Mifflin spun out Inso Corporatio

With income largely from Microsoft and others licensing the spelling and grammar tools, in 1996 Inso acquired Dynatext, Electronic Book Technologies.


Honors

In addition to his PhD in Linguistics from Harvard University, Kučera had a doctorate from
Charles University Charles University (CUNI; , UK; ; ), or historically as the University of Prague (), is the largest university in the Czech Republic. It is one of the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, oldest universities in the world in conti ...
in
Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
which was restored after the
Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution () or Gentle Revolution () was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations against the one-party government of the Communist Pa ...
ousted the
communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He received honorary degrees from Pembroke College in Providence, RI,
Bucknell University Bucknell University is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal-arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts a ...
in Lewisburg, PA, and Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic (1990). Kučera was a member of the academic honor society
Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...
.


References


Selected publications

* H. Kučera (1961). ''The phonology of Czech''. * Andrew Mackie, Tatyana K. McAuley, Cynthia Simmons, eds. (1962). ''For Henry Kučera''. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications. * H. Kučera and W. N. Francis (1967). ''Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English''. * H. Kučera (1968). ''A Comparative Quantitative Phonology of Russian, Czech, and German''. * W. N. Francis and H. Kučera (1983). ''Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar''. * W. N. Francis and H. Kučera (1989). ''Manual of information to accompany a standard corpus of present-day edited American English, for use with digital computers''.


External links


Profile of Henry Kučera
(from ''Language Industry Monitor''). *
Obituary of Henry Kučera
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kucera, Henry 1925 births 2010 deaths Brown University faculty Harvard University alumni Linguists from the Czech Republic Czech computer scientists American computer scientists People from Svitavy District Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States