Peter Szolovits, Personal
Personal Reminiscences
- Dianne Foster, my wife of 38 years died on July 4, 2017. A few
pages celebrate her
life and record her funeral.
- Memorial services for my
parents, June 1999 and August 2000
- My parents both participated in the Shoah Foundation project
to record the reminiscences of survivors of the concentration
camps and labor camps of World War II. I am posting versions of
their videos, but because they speak in Hungarian, I also
include a transcription into English.
- My mentor and colleague at MIT was Prof. William A. Martin,
who died young in 1981. His (partial) collection
of papers may be found at this link. In addition to his
early development of symbolic mathematics and automatic
programming systems, he did pioneering work on the relationship
between knowledge representation and the processing of natural
language.
- My friend and colleague, Marco Ramoni, died much too young.
See my note about his death and
a paper by Zak Kohane and me noting his contributions.
- In memoriam, Elemér Gabrieli
- Reconstruction of the history of
Newton Highlands
- In 1995, I reconstructed the 1975
Lab for Computer Science Brochure on the Web—it contains
many pictures of much younger people!
Family links
- My son, Daniel, is writing a SciFi/Fantasy novel serialized
as a blog, Dispatches
from Otherworld. It is also readable in a serial typeset
form. He lives in Los Angeles.
- My daughter, Lisa, is a theater director and performance and
media artist in New York City, and completed an MFA program at
Brooklyn College (CUNY). Her web
site shows some of her projects.
- My wife, Dianne, and her sister Carolyn (occasionally) wrote
a blog about food and economy: Two Sisters
Making Dinner.
I very occasionally think of documenting some thoughts in a blog.
These are inspired by personal experiences, travel, or
work-related ideas. Very occasional!
Photographic Essays
I like to take photographs. I also like to be able to reminisce
about past events and the people I have interacted with. The
following are pointers to a collection of my own and others'
photos and some videos of interviews with me.
I have used Flickr to post many collections of pictures taken
over recent years. Here is a list of (pointers to) albums that
should be accessible at that sharing site.
- ACMI
Dinner and Induction of Fellows 2015
- Suzanne Bakken had asked me to take pictures of the induction
ceremony in November 2016 in San Francisco. Congratulations to
the new inductees, and it was great to see all who were at the
dinner.
- 2015
MIT EECS Award Ceremony
- Every year, the EECS Department of MIT holds a ceremony
honoring excellence in teaching and research among students and
faculty. The 2015 ceremony was on June 16 at the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts.
- Deep
snows near our home in January and February 2015
- The winter of 2015 was famous for a huge volume of snow in
Boston. In fact, the last of the piles gathered by plowing city
streets did not finally melt until July!
- Family
Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, 2014
- The East Coast branch of Dianne's large family has a tradition
of getting together for a Thanksgiving feast. In 2014, this was
at Hilary's house in Guilford, CT.
- Barbara
Liskov's Retirement Dinner, Sep. 6, 2014
- Barbara Liskov, a distinguished member of the MIT faculty (and
a winner of the Turing Award) officially retired, though she
continues to be active in research. A large gathering of
colleagues, family and friends celebrated. For me, the best line
was her husband Nate thanking her for making his family name
famous.
- 2014 Nostalgia trip through
Hungary
- See this Blog entry for my travelogue and links to hundreds of
photographs.
- Mount
Calvary Cemetery
- Dianne's great-great-grandfather, Jonathan Ladd, is buried at
Mount Calvary Cemetery in Roslindale, as a Civil War veteran. We
visited on Memorial Day, 2014.
- Gorsium,
Hungary, visiting in 2006
- I had visited the old Roman military encampment of Gorsium
with my cousin in 2006. The western shore of the Danube marked
the bounds of Roman expansion in what is present-day Hungary.
One of the stones marks the visit of Sixtus Severus, a general
who became Emperor.
- Scanned photographs from the early days of Project MAC
- In preparation for MIT Project MAC's 50th anniversary
celebration, I received three troves of photographs from its
early days. I scanned them and reproduce them here.
- Bill
Long's Retirement Party, September 2013
- My very long-time collaborator, Dr. William J. Long, retired
after over 35 years of research at CSAIL, following his doctoral
studies here. We held a party to celebrate the
event. Bill continues to come in often and contributes to
our research efforts.
- MEDG Get-togethers
-
- Mary
Foster's 90th Birthday
- In August 2013, the Foster family gathered in Los Angeles to
celebrate Mary's 90th. We were a bit early, since her
birthday was not until October. She is still going strong in
2016.
- Pete &
Dianne Wedding, August 1979
- We were married in a double ceremony with Dianne's sister
Barbara and her husband Chris. It was a blow-out at the Bel Air
Hotel in the Los Angeles area, with all our families, friends, a
Hungarian gypsy band, and a Martin Short-style wedding planner.
Photo by Philip
Greenspun
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