First of all, I am overwhelmed and humbled by the honor the ACL Executive Committee has shown me, an honor that should be shared by the colleagues and students I’ve been lucky enough to have around me this past decade-and-a-half while I’ve been engaged in the FrameNet Project at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. I’ve been asked to say something about the evolution of the...

The topic, once a staple of science fiction, has become one of the defining facts of high tech. From Apple to Amazon, Facebook to Intel, Sergey Brin to Elon Musk, the titans of the 21st century are investing fortunes and countless hours in artificial intelligence (AI). Google’s 2014 purchase of the British firm Deep Mind for something more than $400 million produced a bonanza of publicity earli...

" Galactic Encounters " by Sheehan and Conselice provides a view of galaxies telling the story of how astronomers have pieced together what is known about the modern view of the Universe. The book helps the reader to understand " why " we know what we do, not simply " what, " starting with the development of the telescope that coincides with the modern picture of the Universe. William Sheehan i...

The First Encounter From 1948 to 1951 I lived in the Colegio de España at the University City in Paris. Since the Spanish civil war the college was under the administration of the French government and housed several refugees from Spain. Among them there were some mathematicians who had settled in Argentina, for instance Manuel Balanzat, professor at the University of Cuyo in San Luis and a dis...

W Russell Brain (1895-1966) was two weeks short of his fifty-fourth birthday when he first saw Winston Churchill in consultation at the request of Lord Moran' on 5 October 1949. Russell Brain was a consultant physician at the (then) London Hospital and the Maida Vale Hospital For Nervous Diseases. He earned his living primarily from his private practice in Harley Street as a consultant neurolog...