Ian Hugh Witten (4 March 1947 – 5 May 2023) was a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

at the

University of Waikato The University of Waikato (), established in 1964, is a Public university, public research university located in Hamilton, New Zealand, Hamilton, New Zealand. An additional campus is located in Tauranga. The university performs research in nume ...

, New Zealand. He was a

Chartered Engineer Regulation and licensure in engineering is established by various jurisdictions of the world to encourage life, public welfare, safety, well-being, then environment and other interests of the general public and to define the licensure process thr ...

with the

Institute of Electrical Engineers The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) was a British professional organisation of electronics, electrical, manufacturing, and information technology professionals, especially electrical engineers. It began in 1871 as the Society of Tel ...

Early life and education

Witten was born in

Horsham Horsham () is a market town on the upper reaches of the River Arun on the fringe of the Weald in West Sussex, England. The town is south south-west of London, north-west of Brighton and north-east of the county town of Chichester. Nearby to ...

Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...

, England, on 4 March 1947. He graduated from the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

with a BA and MA (First Class Honours) in mathematics in 1969 and a

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

degree in mathematics and computer science from the

University of Calgary {{Infobox university , name = University of Calgary , image = University of Calgary coat of arms without motto scroll.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms , former ...

, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar, in 1970. He received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1976 from the

University of Essex The University of Essex is a public university, public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, it is one of the original plate glass university, plate glass universities. The university comprises three camp ...

. In 1971, Witten married Pamela Foden at the Chapel of

Gonville and Caius College Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges an ...

, Cambridge. The couple went on to have two daughters.

Career and research

Witten discovered

temporal-difference learning Temporal difference (TD) learning refers to a class of model-free reinforcement learning methods which learn by bootstrapping from the current estimate of the value function. These methods sample from the environment, like Monte Carlo methods, a ...

, inventing the tabular TD(0), the first temporal-difference learning rule for

reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an interdisciplinary area of machine learning and optimal control concerned with how an intelligent agent should take actions in a dynamic environment in order to maximize a reward signal. Reinforcement learnin ...

. Witten was a co-creator of the

Sequitur algorithm Sequitur (or Nevill-Manning–Witten algorithm) is a recursive algorithm developed by Craig Nevill-Manning and Ian H. Witten in 1997 that infers a hierarchical structure (context-free grammar) from a sequence of discrete symbols. The algorithm ope ...

and conceived and obtained funding for the development of the original

WEKA The weka, also known as the Māori hen or woodhen (''Gallirallus australis'') is a flightless bird species of the rail family. It is endemic to New Zealand. Some authorities consider it as the only extant member of the genus '' Gallirallus''. ...

software package for

data mining Data mining is the process of extracting and finding patterns in massive data sets involving methods at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and database systems. Data mining is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and ...

. Witten further made considerable contributions to the field of compression, creating novel algorithms for text and image compression with Alistair Moffat and

Timothy C. Bell Timothy Clinton Bell is a New Zealand computer scientist, with interests in computer science education, computer music and text compression. In 2017, it was announced by SIGCSE that Bell would receive the 2018 award for 'Outstanding Contributi ...

. He is also one of the major contributors to the digital libraries field, and founder of the Greenstone Digital Library Software. His former doctoral students include Craig Nevill-Manning and

Saul Greenberg Saul Greenberg (born 1954) is a computer scientist, a Faculty Professor and Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary. He was awarded ACM Fellowship in 2012 for contributions to computer supported cooperative work and ubiquitous computing. ...

Awards and honours

Witten was elected a

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

in 1996 and a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Royal Society of New Zealand Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family or royalty Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal ...

(FRSNZ) in 1997. In 2004 he received the

International Federation for Information Processing The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) is a global organisation for researchers and professionals working in the field of computing to conduct research, develop standards and promote information sharing. Established in 19 ...

Namur Award for "contributions to the awareness of social implications of information technology, and the need for an holistic approach in the use of information technology that takes account of social implications" and in 2005 the

Hector Medal The Hector Medal, formerly known as the Hector Memorial Medal, is a science award given by the Royal Society Te Apārangi in memory of Sir James Hector to researchers working in New Zealand. It is awarded annually in rotation for different science ...

for contributions to many areas of computer science.

Later life and death

Witten retired from the University of Waikato in 2014, and was accorded the title of professor emeritus. He was diagnosed with cancer in November 2022, and died on 5 May 2023.

Publications

His publications included: * ''Data mining: practical machine learning tools and techniques with Java implementations'' *''Communicating with Microcomputers'' *''Principles of Computer Speech'' *''Making Computers Talk: an Introduction to Speech Synthesis'' *''Text Compression'' *''The Reactive Keyboard'' *''Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images'' *''Web Dragons: Inside the Myths of Search Engine Technology'' *''How to Build a Digital Library'' *''Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Witten, Ian 1947 births 2023 deaths People from Horsham English emigrants to New Zealand People from Hamilton, New Zealand New Zealand computer scientists Academic staff of the University of Calgary Academic staff of the University of Waikato 1996 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand Alumni of the University of Cambridge University of Calgary alumni