Dr. Thomas K. Landauer (April 25, 1932 – March 26, 2014) was a Professor Emeritus at the Department of Psychology of the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University o ...

. He received his doctorate in 1960 from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, and also held academic appointments at Harvard,

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

, Stanford University and

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

. During his 25-year tenure as Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

and its successors, where he was the manager of an

information science Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information. ...

and human-computer interaction research group, he was one of the pioneers of

Latent semantic analysis Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing, in particular distributional semantics, of analyzing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the do ...

. His publications include: * ''The Trouble with Computers'', a controversial analysis of the productivity paradox of information technology. * ''Psychology: A Brief Overview'' published in 1972. * ''Handbook of Latent Semantic Analysis'', co-edited with Danielle S. McNamara, Simon Dennis and

Walter Kintsch Walter Kintsch (born 1932) is an American Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder (United States). He is renowned for his groundbreaking theories in cognitive psychology, especially in relation to text comprehension. ...

in 2013. In 1998, Landauer became the founding President of Knowledge Analysis Technologies (KAT), founded to commercialize his work in automated essay scoring and related technologies, based on

latent semantic analysis Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing, in particular distributional semantics, of analyzing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the do ...

. KAT was acquired in 2004 by

Pearson Education Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eColleg ...

, where Landauer continued to serve as Executive Vice President until his death.

References

1932 births 2014 deaths University of Colorado faculty Psychology educators American technology writers Harvard University alumni 20th-century American psychologists {{US-psychologist-stub