Judit Bar-Ilan facts for kids

Judit Bar-Ilan (born 1958 – died 2019) was a smart Israeli computer scientist. She was known for her studies on how information and science are used and measured. She worked as a professor at Bar-Ilan University and led its Information Science department.

Early Life and School

Judit Bar-Ilan was born in 1958. She went to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There, she earned several degrees, including her main degree in 1981. She got her Ph.D. in 1990. Her Ph.D. work was about making computer systems safe and secure.

After finishing her studies, Bar-Ilan taught at the University of Haifa for a year. Then, she returned to the Hebrew University. She taught about libraries, archives, and information. In 2002, she joined Bar-Ilan University. She became a full professor there in 2010. From 2008 to 2012, she was the head of her department.

What She Studied

Judit Bar-Ilan first worked on making computer systems reliable. This means making sure they keep working even if something goes wrong. She also worked on cryptography, which is about secret codes and keeping information private.

Later, she became famous for studying how information and science are used. This field is called informetrics and scientometrics. She also looked at how we find information and how web search engines work.

Her interest started in the 1990s. She worked on how computers could help libraries. This led her to study search engines. She checked how accurate and reliable search results were. She also saw if search engines could find information in languages other than English.

Bar-Ilan also studied how websites are linked together. She used different methods, like surveys, to understand how people use the internet. Later, she focused on how to measure the success of scientific research. She looked at how often research papers were mentioned by others. This is called citation analysis. She also studied the h-index, which is a way to measure a scientist's impact. She even explored new ways to measure research, called altmetrics. These look at things like how often research is mentioned on social media. She also studied how people use the internet for political reasons.

Awards and Recognition

Judit Bar-Ilan received many awards for her important work.

In 2017, she won the Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal. This award is given by the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. It was for her great work in the field of scientometrics.

In 2018, she got the Research in Information Science Award. This came from the Association for Information Science and Technology. It was for her ongoing contributions to studying information and how it's used.

After she passed away, a special issue of the journal Scientometrics was published in her memory in June 2020.

Personal Life

Judit Bar-Ilan passed away on July 16, 2019.

See also

In Spanish: Judit Bar-Ilan para niños