William Woods
William Woods researches natural-language understanding and knowledge representation. His work connects question answering with the meaning of links in semantic networks. Woods presented an English question-answering system for Apollo 11 sample data. He demonstrated it at the Second Annual Lunar Science Conference in 1971. His 1975 paper is titled What’s in a Link: Foundations for Semantic Networks. It examines how computer representations express meaning and how reasoning systems connect symbols with the things they denote. His 2007 review is titled Meaning and Links. His explanation of procedural semantics covers procedures for determining references, checking facts, calculating values and performing actions.
- Works
- 86
- Citations
- 4,947
- h-index
- 27
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1971
Questions about lunar samples
Woods presented an English question-answering system for Apollo 11 sample data. He demonstrated it at the Second Annual Lunar Science Conference in 1971.
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1975
Semantic-network foundations
His 1975 paper is titled What’s in a Link: Foundations for Semantic Networks. It examines how computer representations express meaning and how reasoning systems connect symbols with the things they denote.
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2007
Meaning and links revisited
His 2007 review is titled Meaning and Links. His explanation of procedural semantics covers procedures for determining references, checking facts, calculating values and performing actions.
Sources and credits
Photo: parsecraft.com; William A. Woods; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: parsecraft.com. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.