Karen Spärck Jones

Karen Spärck Jones FBA was a pioneering British computer scientist responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency, a technology that underlies most modern search engines. In 2019, The New York Times published her belated obituary in its series Overlooked, calling her "a pioneer of computer science for work combining statistics and linguistics, and an advocate for women in the field." From 2008, to recognize her achievements in the fields of IR and NLP, the Karen Spärck Jones Award is awarded to a new recipient with outstanding research in one or both of her fields.