Obituaries - March 10, 2000

K. Jon Barwise; Expert on Mathematical Logic

K. Jon Barwise, 57, innovative researcher and educator in mathematical logic and comparing human and computer language. Last year Barwise, since 1990 a professor of philosophy, computer science and mathematics and adjunct professor of linguistics at Indiana University, was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his research in logic and its interactions with philosophy and language. He taught at Stanford University from 1983 to 1990, and in 1984 became the co-founder and first director of its Center for the Study of Language and Information. He was also the first director of Stanford’s Symbolic Systems Program. Born in Independence, Mo., Barwise earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale and a doctorate in mathematics from Stanford. Prior to his work at Stanford and Indiana, he taught briefly at the University of Wisconsin, Oxford and UCLA. Barwise wrote or co-wrote five books on his research involving theoretical content and the way it is expressed in and transferred among language, computers and graphics. With Stanford’s John Etchemendy, a frequent collaborator, Barwise developed software that was published with textbooks to illustrate abstract concepts in logic. The work earned the two men the Educom Medal in 1997. On Saturday in Bloomington, Ind., of cancer.