Martin Kay is a computer scientist. He is known for his work in computational linguistics. In the year 1958 he started to work at the Cambridge Language Research Unit , which is one of the earliest centers for research in what is now known as Computational Linguistics. Then, he moved to Santa Monica and became head of research in linguistics and machine translation. He left Rand in 1972 to become Chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. Now, he is Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University and Honorary Professor of Computational Linguistics at Saarland University.
He has achieved on the development of chart parsing and functional unification grammar and major contributions to the application of finite state automata in computational phonology and morphology. He is also thought as a leading authority on machine translation.
He´s said that: “The computer is a tool that can be used to magnify human productivity. Used properly, it has not to be dehumanizing, with the stamp of his seal Orwellian, the works of the human work and creativity, but to appropriate what is mechanical and routine, can be released to engage fully in the works that are essentially human.”
References:
- Martin Kay, In Stanford University. (Oct 21, 2004). Retrieved 13.05, March 23, 2009 from: http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/people/pages/kay.shtml
- Martin Kay, short biography. Retrieved: 23 March 2009 21:30. From http://www.stanford.edu/~mjkay/bio_page.html
- Martin Kay. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved: 8 March 2009 17:50. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kay
