photo by Edgar Rosenberg
A towering figure in the field of information retrieval, Gerard Salton synthesized ideas from mathematics, statistics, and natural language processing to create a scientific basis for extracting semantics from word frequency. The impact of his contribution is profound - five textbooks, over 150 research papers, and dozens of Ph.D. students. The modern information science research scene, with its terabyte databases, Web, and related technologies, owes a great deal to Gerry's pioneering efforts.
