Joyce Friedman facts for kids
Joyce Barbara Friedman (1928 – November 28, 2018) was an amazing American scientist. She was a mathematician, a computer scientist, and a language expert who used computers. She taught at big universities like the University of Michigan and Boston University. She even led a group called the Association for Computational Linguistics.
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Joyce Friedman's Early Life and Learning
Joyce Friedman was born in 1928. She was a very smart student and became a Durant Scholar at Wellesley College. She finished her studies there in 1949. Later, she earned a master's degree from Radcliffe College in 1952.
After college, she worked on projects for the US Department of Defense. She helped with things like planning production at different companies.
Shifting Focus to Computers
Joyce went back to school at Harvard University. Her interests changed from planning tasks to making computers think. She earned her Ph.D. (a very high degree) in 1965. Her special project was about how computers could make decisions using logic.
Her Career as a Professor and Researcher
After getting her Ph.D., Joyce Friedman became a professor. She taught at Stanford University from 1965 to 1968. Then, she moved to the University of Michigan to teach computer science. She became a full professor there in 1971. In 1983, she moved to Boston University and became the head of the computer science department.
Computers and Language
Even before she finished her Ph.D., Joyce worked on a project to teach computers to understand and answer questions in English. This was a very new idea at the time!
Most of her research focused on computational linguistics. This is the study of how computers can understand and use human language. She also worked on formal grammars, which are rules for how language works. In 1971, she was the president of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
She wrote a book in 1971 called A Computational Model of Transformational Grammar. This book was about how computers could understand the way sentences are built. Many students learned from her. She had over 180 academic "descendants" through her doctoral students.
Joyce Friedman passed away on November 28, 2018, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Achievements and Recognition
In 1986, Joyce Friedman was recognized for her important work. She was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This is a big honor for scientists.
