Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
Encyclopedia
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
, and linguist
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
, best known for his pioneering work in machine translation
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...
and formal linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
.
Biography
Born Oscar Westreich, he was raised in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. In 1933 he emigrated to Palestine with the Bnei Akiva
Bnei Akiva
Bnei Akiva is the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with over 125,000 members in 37 countries. It was established in Mandate Palestine in 1929.-History:...
youth movement, and briefly joined the kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
Tirat Zvi
Tirat Zvi
Tirat Zvi 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 jurisdiction of Valley of Springs Regional Council. In 2006, the kibbutz had a population of...
before settling in Jerusalem and marrying Shulamith.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he served in the Jewish Brigade
Jewish Brigade
The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group was a military formation of the British Army that served in Europe during the Second World War. The brigade was formed in late 1944, and its personnel fought the Germans in Italy...
of the British Army. He fought with the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
during the Israeli War of Independence
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
, losing an eye.
Bar-Hillel received his PhD in Philosophy from the Hebrew University where he also studied mathematics under Abraham Fraenkel, with whom he eventually coauthored Foundations of Set Theory (1958, 1973).
Bar-Hillel was a major disciple of Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap was an influential German-born 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....
, whose Logical Syntax of Language much influenced him. He began a correspondence with Carnap in the 1940s, which led to a 1950 postdoc under Carnap at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, 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, leaving in 1953 just before Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
's arrival. At MIT, Bar-Hillel was the first academic to work full-time in the field of Machine Translation
Machine translation
Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...
; he 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
Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web...
.
In 1953, Bar-Hillel joined the philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
department at the Hebrew University, where he taught until his untimely death at age 60. His teachings and writings strongly influenced an entire generation of Israeli philosophers and linguists, including Asa Kasher
Asa Kasher
Asa Kasher is an Israeli philosopher and linguist working at Tel Aviv University, Israel.-Biography:He is noted for authorship of Israel Defense Forces's Code of Conduct...
and Avishai Margalit
Avishai Margalit
Avishai Margalit is the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.-Biography:Avishai Margalit grew up in Jerusalem. He was educated in Jerusalem and did his army service in the airborne...
. In 1953, he founded a pioneering algebraic-computational linguistic group, and in 1961 he contributed to the proof of the pumping lemma
Pumping lemma
In the theory of formal languages in computability theory, a pumping lemma or pumping argument states that, for a particular language to be a member of a language class, any sufficiently long string in the language contains a section, or sections, that can be removed, or repeated any number of...
for context-free languages (sometimes called the Bar-Hillel lemma). Bar-Hillel helped found the Hebrew University's department of Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
. From 1966 to 1968 Bar-Hillel presided over the International Association of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science.
Bar-Hillel's daughter Maya Bar-Hillel is a cognitive psychologist
Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....
at the Hebrew University, known for her collaborations with Amos Tversky
Amos Tversky
Amos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
and for her role in critiquing Bible code
Bible code
The Bible code , also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of secret messages encoded within the text Hebrew Bible and describing prophesies and other guidance regarding the future. This hidden code has been described as a method by which specific letters from the text can be selected to...
study. His other daughter, Mira Bar-Hillel, is the property and planning correspondent for the London Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
. His granddaughter, Gili Bar-Hillel
Gili Bar-Hillel
Gili Bar-Hillel Semo is an English-Hebrew translator from Israel, best known for translating the Harry Potter series into Hebrew.-Biography:...
, is the Hebrew translator of the Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
series.
Select bibliography
- 1954 - Indexical Expressions, in: Mind, Vol. 63, Pp. 359–379.
- 1958 - (with Abraham Fraenkel) Foundations of Set Theory. 2nd ed. (also with Azriel LevyAzriel LevyAzriel Levy is an Israeli mathematician, logician, and a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....
and Dirk van DalenDirk van DalenDirk van Dalen is a Dutch mathematician and historian of science.Van Dalen studied mathematics and physics and astronomy at the University of Amsterdam. Inspired by the work of LEJ Brouwer and Arend Heyting, he received his Ph.D...
), 1973. - 1964 - Language and Information
- 1970 - Aspects of Language: Essays and Lectures on Philosophy of Language, Linguistic Philosophy and Methodology of Linguistics
- 1972 - Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Editor)
- 1975 - Pragmatics of Natural Languages (Editor)
External links
- "Yehoshua Bar-Hillel: A Philosopher's Contribution to Machine Translation"
- "Bar-Hillel and Machine Translation: Then and Now."
- Bar-Hillel Colloquium.
- Translation Trouble: Time Magazine article from 1954.