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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