The Dawn of Statistical ASR and MT

I am very grateful for the award you have bestowed on me. To understand your generosity I have to assume that you are honoring the leadership of three innovative groups that I headed in the last 47 years: at Cornell, IBM, and now at Johns Hopkins. You know my co-workers in the last two teams. The Cornell group was in Information Theory and included Toby Berger, Terrence Fine, and Neil J. A. Sloane (earlier my Ph.D. student), all of whom earned their own laurels. I was told that I should give an acceptance speech and was furnished with example texts by previous recipients. They wrote about the development and impact of their ideas. So I will tell you about my beginnings and motivations and then focus on the contributions of my IBM team. In this way the text will have some historical value and may clear up certain widely held misconceptions.