Yehoshua Bar-Hillel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel
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| Born | September 8, 1915 |
| Died | September 25, 1975 (aged 60) |
| Education | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Known for | Bar-Hillel lemma |
| Children | Maya, Mira |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | philosophy, mathematics, linguistics |
| Institutions | MIT Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Thesis | Theory of syntactic categories (1945) |
| Doctoral advisor | Abraham Fraenkel |
| Other academic advisors | Rudolf Carnap |
| Influenced | Asa Kasher Avishai Margalit |
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (born September 8, 1915, in Vienna; died September 25, 1975, in Jerusalem) was a smart Israeli thinker. He was a philosopher, a mathematician, and a linguist. He was one of the first people to work on machine translation (teaching computers to translate languages). He also helped create formal linguistics, which uses math to study language.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel was born Oscar Westreich in Vienna, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. He grew up in Berlin, Germany. In 1933, he moved to Mandatory Palestine (now Israel). He joined a youth group called Bnei Akiva.
He briefly lived on a kibbutz (a community farm) called Tirat Zvi. Later, he settled in Jerusalem and got married.
Military Service
During World War II, Bar-Hillel served in the Jewish Brigade. This was a special group of Jewish soldiers in the British Army. He also fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which led to the creation of Israel. During this war, he lost an eye.
Academic Journey
Bar-Hillel earned his PhD in philosophy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also studied mathematics there. One of his teachers was Abraham Fraenkel, a famous mathematician. They later wrote a book together called Foundations of Set Theory.
He was greatly inspired by Rudolf Carnap, another important philosopher. Bar-Hillel and Carnap started writing letters to each other in the 1940s. This led Bar-Hillel to study with Carnap at the University of Chicago in 1950. They also worked together on a book about how information is understood.
Machine Translation and Linguistics
After his time in Chicago, Bar-Hillel worked at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He was the first person there to work full-time on machine translation. This is the idea of using computers to translate languages automatically.
In 1952, he organized the first big meeting about machine translation. Later, he wondered if computers could ever truly translate perfectly. He also helped start the field of information retrieval, which is about finding information quickly.
In 1953, Bar-Hillel returned to the Hebrew University. He taught philosophy there until he passed away at age 60. His ideas had a big impact on many Israeli philosophers and linguists. Some of his students included Asa Kasher and Avishai Margalit.
He also started a group that used math to study language. In 1961, he helped prove something important in computer science. It's called the pumping lemma for context-free languages, and sometimes it's even called the Bar-Hillel lemma. He also helped create the department of Philosophy of Science at the Hebrew University.
Family Life
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel had two daughters. His daughter, Maya Bar-Hillel, is a cognitive psychologist. She studies how people think and make decisions. She worked with Amos Tversky, another famous psychologist. Maya is also known for looking closely at claims about "Bible codes."
His other daughter, Mira Bar-Hillel, is a journalist. His granddaughter, Gili Bar-Hillel, is famous for translating the Harry Potter books into Hebrew.
See also
In Spanish: Yehoshua Bar-Hillel para niños
