Michael E Lesk

Timeline

1. 1964–1969

   SMART retrieval and a Harvard PhD

   In the 1960s, he works on the SMART Information Retrieval System project, writing much of its retrieval code and running many of its retrieval experiments. He earns a BA in physics and chemistry from Harvard College in 1964 and a PhD in chemical physics from Harvard University in 1969.

2. 1970–1984

   Lex and Unix at Bell Labs

   From 1970 to 1984, he works at Bell Labs in the group that builds Unix. He writes the tbl and refer word-processing tools, the uucp networking program and the Portable I/O Library, and with Eric Schmidt he writes Lex, a program that generates lexical analyzers.

3. 1984–1995

   Research manager at Bellcore

   In 1984, he moves to Bellcore, where he manages the computer science research group until 1995. There he builds information systems for geography, such as a system for driving directions, and for dictionaries. In 1987, he spends a year as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the British Library, based at University College London.

4. 1986

   The Lesk algorithm

   In 1986, he introduces the Lesk algorithm, a classical natural language processing algorithm for word sense disambiguation. It picks the meaning of an ambiguous word by comparing its dictionary definitions with the words in its surrounding context.

5. 1994

   A USENIX Flame award

   In 1994, USENIX gives him its Flame award for lifetime achievement, honoring his invention of UUCP.

6. 1998–2002

   Division director at NSF

   From 1998 to 2002, he heads the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation, where he oversees Phase 2 of the NSF's Digital Library Initiative. During his NSF years, he also teaches computer science at Columbia University as an adjunct lecturer.

7. 2003–2009

   Professor at Rutgers

   In 2003, he joins the Library and Information Science Department at Rutgers' School of Communication and Information, chairs it from 2005 to 2008, and spends a 2009 sabbatical as a visiting researcher at Google. His book Understanding Digital Libraries appears in 2004 as the second edition of Practical Digital Libraries. In 2005, he is elected to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to UNIX applications, information systems and digital libraries.

8. Since July 2023

   Professor emeritus at Rutgers

   In July 2023, he becomes professor emeritus of library and information science at Rutgers. His Rutgers courses include Digital Libraries, Fundamentals of Data Science and Data Curation.