I note with sadness the passing earlier this month of Dr. Karen Spärck Jones, a British computer scientist and research pioneer at the intersection of information retrieval and natural language processing.
In the mid 90s, i was a younger researcher at BBN Technologies doing government-funded work on information extraction. At that time, DARPA’s TIPSTER program was the key American funding vehicle for much research in both information retrieval and information extraction. Consequently, many important figures in the field came to TIPSTER conferences, either to report on funded research or as observers. I recall several positive technical interactions with Prof. Spärck Jones, who graciously treated me, not as the bit player i actually was, but as a potential colleague with ideas to share. Her accessibility despite her well-established (and well-deserved) reputation made an impression on me at the time.