John Florian Sowa (born 1940) is an Americancomputer scientist, an expert inartificial intelligence andcomputer design, and the inventor ofconceptual graphs.^[1][2]

Sowa received a BS in mathematics fromMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962, an MA in applied mathematics fromHarvard University in 1966, and a PhD incomputer science from theVrije Universiteit Brussel in 1999 with a dissertation titled "Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations".^[3]

Sowa spent most of his professional career atIBM, starting in 1962 at IBM's applied mathematics group. Over the decades he has researched and developed emerging fields ofcomputer science fromcompilers,programming languages, andsystem architecture^[4] to artificial intelligence andknowledge representation. In the 1990s Sowa was associated with the IBM Educational Center in New York. Over the years he taught courses at the IBM Systems Research Institute,Binghamton University,Stanford University, theLinguistic Society of America and theUniversité du Québec à Montréal. He is a fellow of theAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

After early retirement at IBM, Sowa in 2001 cofounded VivoMind Intelligence, Inc. withArun K. Majumdar. With this company he was developingdata-mining anddatabase technology, more specifically high-level "ontologies" forartificial intelligence and automatednatural language understanding. Currently Sowa is working with Kyndi Inc., also founded by Majumdar.

John Sowa is married to thephilologist Cora Angier Sowa,^[5] and they live inCroton-on-Hudson, New York.

Sowa's research interests since the 1970s were in the field ofartificial intelligence,expert systems anddatabase query linked to natural languages.^[4] In his work he combines ideas from numerous disciplines and eras modern and ancient, for example, applying ideas fromAristotle, the medievalscholastics toAlfred North Whitehead and includingdatabase schema theory, and incorporating the model of analogy of Islamic scholarIbn Taymiyyah in his works.^[6]

Sowa invented conceptual graphs, a graphic notation for logic and natural language, based on the structures insemantic networks and on theexistential graphs ofCharles S. Peirce. He introduced the concept in the 1976 article "Conceptual graphs for a data base interface" in theIBM Journal of Research and Development.^[7] He elaborated upon it in the 1983 bookConceptual structures: information processing in mind and machine.

In the 1980s, this theory had "been adopted by a number of research and development groups throughout the world.^[4] International conferences on conceptual structures (ICCS) have been held since 1993, following a series of conceptual graph workshops that began in 1986.^[8]

In 1991, Sowa first stated hisLaw of Standards:

"Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an officialstandard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as ade facto standard for X."^[9]

LikeGall's law, The Law of Standards is essentially an argument in favour of underspecification. Examples include:

• The introduction ofPL/I resulting inCOBOL andFORTRAN becoming the de facto standards for business andscientific programming respectively
• The introduction ofAlgol-68 resulting inPascal becoming the de facto standard for academic programming
• The introduction of theAda language resulting inC becoming the de facto standard forUS Department of Defense programming
• The introduction ofOS/2 resulting inWindows becoming the de facto standard fordesktop OS
• The introduction ofX.400 resulting inSMTP becoming the de facto standard forelectronic mail
• The introduction ofX.500 resulting inLDAP becoming the de facto standard fordirectory services

• 1984.Conceptual Structures - Information Processing in Mind and Machine. The Systems Programming Series, Addison-Wesley^[10]
• 1991.Principles of Semantic Networks. Morgan Kaufmann.
• Mineau, Guy W; Moulin, Bernard;Sowa, John F, eds. (1993).Conceptual Graphs for Knowledge Representation.LNCS. Vol. 699.doi:10.1007/3-540-56979-0.ISBN 978-3-540-56979-4.S2CID 32275791.
• 1994.International Conference on Conceptual Structures (2nd : 1994 : College Park, Md.)Conceptual structures, current practices : Second International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS'94, College Park, Maryland, USA, August 16–20, 1994 : proceedings. William M. Tepfenhart, Judith P. Dick, John F. Sowa, eds.
• Ellis, Gerard; Levinson, Robert; Rich, William;Sowa, John F, eds. (1995).Conceptual Structures: Applications, Implementation and Theory.LNCS. Vol. 954.doi:10.1007/3-540-60161-9.ISBN 978-3-540-60161-6.S2CID 27300281.
• Lukose, Dickson; Delugach, Harry; Keeler, Mary; Searle, Leroy;Sowa, John, eds. (1997).Conceptual Structures: Fulfilling Peirce's Dream.LNCS. Vol. 1257.doi:10.1007/BFb0027865.ISBN 3-540-63308-1.S2CID 1934069.
• 2000.Knowledge representation : logical, philosophical, and computational foundations, Brooks Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove^[11]

Articles, a selection^[12]

• Sowa, J. F. (July 1976). "Conceptual Graphs for a Data Base Interface".IBM Journal of Research and Development.20 (4):336–357.doi:10.1147/rd.204.0336.
• Sowa, J. F.; Zachman, J. A. (1992). "Extending and formalizing the framework for information systems architecture".IBM Systems Journal.31 (3):590–616.doi:10.1147/sj.313.0590.
• 1992. "Conceptual Graph Summary"; In: T.E. Nagle et al. (Eds.).Conceptual Structures: Current Research and Practice. Chichester: Ellis Horwood.
• 1995. "Top-level ontological categories." in:International journal of human-computer studies. Vol. 43, Iss. 5–6, Nov. 1995, pp. 669–685
• 2006. "Semantic Networks". In:Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.. John Wiley & Sons.

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• John F. Sowa homepage

• 1940 births
• Artificial intelligence researchers
• Knowledge representation
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• Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni
• Binghamton University faculty
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
• Vrije Universiteit Brussel alumni
• Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

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