PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Naomi Sager

Naomi Sager is an American computational linguist who built early English parsing programs and later systems that turn hospital records into structured tables. Born in Chicago in 1927, she earned an electrical engineering degree at Columbia in 1953, worked as an electronics engineer at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, and moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 1959, where she joined the team that developed the first English-language parsing program and earned a linguistics PhD under Zellig Harris in 1968. In 1965, New York University launched the Linguistic String Project under her leadership, which produced a string parser, a Restriction Language for writing grammar constraints, and a Medical Language Processor for clinical narrative. Her 1981 book, Natural Language Information Processing: A Computer Grammar of English and Its Applications, became a primary reference in the field, and her doctoral students included Jerry Hobbs and Carol Friedman. She is a retired research professor at New York University.

Born
1927
Works
65
Citations
1,202
h-index
16
Badges

Years link to their sources. Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1946–1959

    Electronics engineer at Sloan-Kettering

    Born in Chicago in 1927, she earns a bachelor of philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1946 and a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Columbia in 1953. She then works for five years as an electronics engineer in the Biophysics Department of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City.

  2. 1959–1968

    Parsing research at Penn

    She moves to the University of Pennsylvania in 1959 and joins the team that develops the first English-language parsing program, which runs on the UNIVAC I. Her 1960 report for Penn's linguistics department describes a left-to-right procedure that becomes the parsing algorithm of the later Linguistic String Project. In 1968, she earns a PhD in linguistics at Penn with a thesis titled Seriality and Ambiguity in English Sentence Structure, advised by Zellig Harris.

  3. 1965

    Starting the Linguistic String Project

    She initiates the Linguistic String Project at New York University in 1965 with a grant from the Office of Science Information Services of the National Science Foundation, which sought rapid access for scientists to information in the expanding technical literature. The project builds on Zellig Harris's linguistic string theory, transformation analysis, and sublanguage grammar.

  4. 1967–1975

    A string parser and Restriction Language

    Her 1967 article "Syntactic Analysis of Natural Language" in Advances in Computers lays out the basis for language computation and describes the first two implementations of the project's parser and string grammar. In 1975, she and R. Grishman publish "The Restriction Language for Computer Grammars of Natural Language" in Communications of the ACM, which describes an English-like programming language for writing grammar constraints.

  5. 1974–1987

    Doctoral students at NYU

    Her doctoral students at NYU include Jerry Hobbs, who completes his degree in 1974, Stephen Johnson, who completes his degree in 1987, and Carol Friedman. She also teaches classes in natural language processing there.

  6. 1978

    Medical records into tables

    In 1978, she, Lynette Hirschman and Margaret Lyman describe NYU programs that convert natural-language medical records into a structured table of information. Their paper "Computerized Language Processing for Multiple Use of Narrative Discharge Summaries" applies the programs to pediatric discharge summaries for hospitalizations due to sickle cell disease.

  7. 1981–1987

    A computer grammar of English

    Her 1981 book, Natural Language Information Processing: A Computer Grammar of English and its Applications, becomes a primary reference in the field. The project's Medical Language Processor supports online access by clinicians to portions of narrative patient documents, and a 1987 volume by Sager, Carol Friedman, Margaret Lyman and the project team summarizes the work on medical records.

  8. As of October 2026

    Retired NYU research professor

    In October 2004, she gives the keynote address at the Second International Conference on the Clinical Document Architecture in Acapulco, Mexico, where Ngô Thanh Nhàn, the principal designer, demonstrates an online viewer for XML medical knowledge tags added to the Medical Language Processor. She is a retired research professor at New York University.

Career

  1. Since 1972New York UniversityResearch Professor
  2. 1990–1996Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
  3. Until 1959Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer ResearchElectronics engineer
  4. 1959–1968University of Pennsylvania

Education

  1. 1968University of PennsylvaniaPhD
  2. 1953Columbia UniversityBachelor of Science
  3. 1946University of ChicagoBachelor of Philosophy

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Natural Language Processing and the Representation of Clinical Data1994 · Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association · 216 citations
  2. Medical Language Processing: Computer Management of Narrative Data1987 · Medical Entomology and Zoology · 170 citationsWith Carol Friedman
  3. Natural language information processing1980 · 114 citations
  4. Grammatically-based automatic word class formation1975 · Information Processing & Management · 79 citationsWith Ralph Grishman
  5. Natural Language Information Formatting: The Automatic Conversion of Texts to a Structured Data Base1978 · Advances in computers · 62 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes New York University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.
  4. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes New York University. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Naomi Sager yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Naomi Sager en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Introduction to the Linguistic String Project cs.nyu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Naomi Sager - The Mathematics Genealogy Project mathgenealogy.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Naomi Sager cs.nyu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Computerized Language Processing for Multiple Use of Narrative Discharge Summaries - PMC pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. MLP Medical Language Processing — About Us cs.nyu.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.