Karen Ida Boalth Spärck Jones (26 August 1935 – 4 April 2007) was a self-taught programmer and a pioneering British computer and information scientist responsible for the concept of
inverse document frequency (IDF), a technology that underlies most modern
search engine
A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...
s.
She was an advocate for women in computer science, her slogan being, "Computing is too important to be left to men." In 2019, ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' published her belated obituary in its series ''Overlooked'',
calling her "a pioneer of computer science for work combining statistics and linguistics, and an advocate for women in the field."
From 2008, to recognise her achievements in the fields of
information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...
(IR) and
natural language processing
Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...
(NLP), the
Karen Spärck Jones Award is awarded annually to a recipient for outstanding research in one or both of her fields.
Early life and education
Karen Ida Boalth Spärck Jones was born in
Huddersfield
Huddersfield is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confl ...
, Yorkshire, England. Her parents were Alfred Owen Jones, a chemistry lecturer, and Ida Spärck, a
Norwegian who worked for the Norwegian government while in exile in London during World War II.
Spärck Jones was educated at a grammar school in Huddersfield and then from 1953 to 1956 at
Girton College, Cambridge, studying history, with an additional final year in
Moral Sciences (philosophy). While at Cambridge, Spärck Jones joined the organisation known as the
Cambridge Language Research Unit (CLRU) and met the head of CLRU
Margaret Masterman, who would inspire her to go into computer science.
While working at the CLRU, Spärck Jones began pursuing her PhD At the time of submission, her PhD thesis was cast aside as uninspired and lacking original thought, but was later published in its entirety as a book. She briefly became a school teacher
before moving into computer science. Spärck Jones married fellow Cambridge computer scientist
Roger Needham in 1958.
Career
Spärck Jones worked at the Cambridge Language Research Unit from the late 1950s,
then at
Cambridge University Computer Laboratory from 1974 until her retirement in 2002.
From 1999, she held the post of Professor of Computers and Information.
She had been given a permanent position only in 1993, and earlier in her career had been employed on a series of short-term contracts.
She continued to work in the Computer Laboratory until shortly before her death. Her publications include nine books and numerous papers. A full list of her publications is available from the Cambridge Computer Laboratory.
Spärck Jones' main research interests, since the late 1950s, were
natural language processing
Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...
and
information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...
. In 1964, Spärck Jones published "Synonymy and Semantic Classification", which is now seen as a foundational paper in the field of natural language processing. One of her most important contributions was the concept of
inverse document frequency (IDF) weighting in information retrieval, which she introduced in a 1972 paper.
IDF is used in most
search engine
A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...
s today, usually as part of the
term frequency–inverse document frequency (TF–IDF) weighting scheme. In the 1980s, Spärck Jones began her work on early
speech recognition
Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...
systems. In 1982 she became involved in the
Alvey Programme
which was an initiative to motivate more computer science research across the country.
Honours and awards
These include:
*
Gerard Salton Award (1988)
* Elected a Fellow of
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...
(AAAI) in 1993
* President of the
Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) in 1994
* Honorary degree of
Doctor of Science
A Doctor of Science (; most commonly abbreviated DSc or ScD) is a science doctorate awarded in a number of countries throughout the world.
Africa
Algeria and Morocco
In Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, all universities accredited by the s ...
from
The City University in 1997.
* Elected a
Fellow
A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...
of the
British Academy
The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.
It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...
(FBA), where she also served as Vice-President in 2000–2002
* Fellow of
European Association for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI)
*
Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)
Award of Merit (2002)
*
Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Lifetime Achievement Award (2004)
*
ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award (2006)
*
BCS Lovelace Medal (2007)
*
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...
(ACM) Women's Group Athena Award (2007)
Death and legacy
Spärck Jones died on 4 April 2007, due to cancer at the age of 71.
In 2008, the
BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS IRSG) in conjunction with the
British Computer Society
image:Maurice Vincent Wilkes 1980 (3).jpg, Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957.
The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned ...
established an annual
Karen Spärck Jones Award in her honour, to encourage and promote research that advances understanding of Natural Language Processing or Information Retrieval.
The Karen Spärck Jones lecture sponsored by BCS recognises the contribution that women have made to computing.
In August 2017, the
University of Huddersfield renamed one of its campus buildings in her honour. Formerly known as Canalside West, the Spärck Jones building houses the University's School of Computing and Engineering.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sparck Jones, Karen
1935 births
2007 deaths
Alumni of Girton College, Cambridge
British computer scientists
British people of Norwegian descent
British women computer scientists
Fellows of the British Academy
Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Fellows of Newnham College, Cambridge
Fellows of Wolfson College, Cambridge
Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory
People from Huddersfield
Deaths from cancer in England
Information retrieval researchers
British artificial intelligence researchers
20th-century British women scientists
People from South Cambridgeshire District
Natural language processing researchers
Presidents of the Association for Computational Linguistics