Raimund G. Piotrovskij Passed Away

On August 4, 2009, Russian linguist Professor Raimund Genrichovič Piotrovskij passed away at the age of 87. Raimund Genrichovič, who was born in Rubežnaja (Ukraine) on august 17, 1922, grew up in a Belorussian-Polish-German family. In 1944, he graduated from the Philological Faculty (Department for Romanic languages) at Leningrad University. After his Ph.D. in 1947, he further qualified for his academic carreer with his habilitation in 1956. Raimund Genrichovič worked at various academic institutions of the former Soviet Union (Leningrad University, Leningrad Pedagogical University, Moldavian Academy of Sciences); until his last days, he worked at the Alexander Herzen Pedegogical University in Saint Petersburg, where he had the position of a Professor for Romanic languages and was Head of the Department for Computer Linguistics. He was a member of many academic institutions, both in Russia and abroad; thus, among others, he was a Corresponding Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Actual Member of the Cybernetic Academy Odobleja, Honorary Professor of the UNESCO, Member of the International Society for Computer Linguistics and, of course, of the International Quantitative Linguistics Association.

Being the mentor and head of the group Statistiska reči, Raimund Genrichovič became internationally most renowned. From the 1960s on, this group of experts, comprising for then 200 specialists from the fields of linguistics, information science, statistics and mathematics, as well as psychology, has had enormous impact on the appearance of Russian and Soviet statistical linguistics, for more than thirty years. All participants of this group have significantly contributed to the appearance of quantitative linguistics by pursuing the study of linguistic structures in an interdisciplinary approach.
The group's activities are well documented in the many volumes of Статистика речи and Статистика текста, published under Raimund Genrichovič's responsibility from 1968-88. Raimund Genrichovi's 1968 book Информационные измериная яазыка are a pioneering work in the realm of measurement of information. His Инженерная лингвистика (1979) particularly focuses on questions of machine translation.
On the occasion of his 80th birthday, volume 10 of the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics was devoted to Raimund Genrichovič. In quantitative linguistics, Raimund Genrichovič's name will remain to be closely associated with the Piotrovskij Law, which concerns the S-shape form of language change. In his last years, Raimund Genrichovič devoted much of his interest to synergetic linguistics (cf. 2006), and he was one of the editors of the International Handbook of Quantitative Linguistics.
With Raimund Genrichovič Piotrovskij's death, the international quantitative linguistics scene has lost one of its great bearers. He will remain in our memory.

New IQLA Council Elected

On September 17, 2009, on occasion of IQLA Business Meeting during Qualico 2009 in Graz, the new IQLA Council has been elected. With Reinhard Köhler (Trier, Germany) continuing to take the President's position, Peter Grzybek (Graz, Austria), formerly Secretary General, now is the Vice President. Emmerich Kelih (also Graz), formerly Treasurer, is now Secretary General, followed by Ján Mačutek in the Treasurer's position. The four Members at Large are: Sergej Andreev (Smolensk, Russia), Sheila Embleton (Toronto, Canada), Jan Králik (Prague, Czech Republic), and Haruko Sanada (Tokyo, Japan). All Council Members' Addresses may be found on IQLA Contact page.

Gabriel Altmann Appointed IQLA Honorary Presdident

On September 17, 2009, on occasion of IQLA Business Meeting during Qualico 2009 in Graz, IQLA Council decided to appoint Professor Gabriel Altmann (Lüdenscheid, Germany) Honoraray President of the Association. As is well known in the field of Quantitative Linguistics, Professor Altmann, IQLA member since its foundation in 1994, has outstanding merits in the foundation, the development, and the advancement of the discipline.
Bibliography: "Complete Bibliogrpaphy of scholarly works (1960-2005)". In: Peter Grzybek & Reinhard Köhler (eds.), Exact Methods in the Study of Language and Text. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin, New York, 2007, pp. 735-754.
Links: Gabriel Altmann (Homepage), Gabriel Altmann (Wikipedia)