Email: rakirsch@acm.org
Phone: (503) 228-9320
Mr. Russell A. Kirsch received his scientific training from the Bronx High School of Science, graduating in 1946. Subsequent refinements occurred at New York University (B.E.E. 1950), Harvard University (S.M. 1952), American University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was a member of the group that first designed and built digital computers in the U.S. Federal Government at the National Bureau of Standards where he was responsible for computer design, operation, training, programming, and research for thirty three years beginning in 1951. http://museum.nist.gov/panels/seac/seacover.htm
He retired as head of Artificial Intelligence research in 1985 to become Director of Research of the Sturvil Corporation, a non-profit public interest corporation active in government information research and in computers in the fine arts. He also still maintains an emeritus affiliation with NBS (now called National Institute of Standards and Technology).
Over the years he has collaborated with U.S. Government agencies to design and introduce computers into the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Energy, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, State, Treasury and many independent agencies. He is finally convinced that the operation of the Federal Government is a mystery.
He published the results of his research in papers that started the computer fields of Image Processing, Syntactic Pattern Recognition, and Chemical Structure Searching. He was among the early workers in the use of computers in Natural Language Processing, Library Science,Time Sharing, Biomedicine, Artificial Intelligence, and Security Printing.
He is a past Advisory Editor of the Inst. of Electrical. and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and currently Advisory Editor of the journal Languages of Design. He has been chair of various conferences on Pattern Recognition and Image Processing and Artificial Intelligence. He is a Life Member of the IEEE, a member of the Assoc for Computing Machinery, and a Fellow of The Amer. Assn for the Advancement of Science. He has been an invited lecturer at many scientific organizations and universities in the USA, Japan, England, France, Italy, Netherlands, and Australia.
His current research interests are mainly in the use of computers in the
fine arts and in studying ancient petroglyphs. With his wife, Joan L. Kirsch,
an art historian and printmaker (whom he courted while they were inside the
first computer) he has been collaborating on research to teach computers part
of what we know about recognizing style in paintings. He feels that the
computer is an adequately expressive medium not only for making new art, but,
rather, for expressing what we know about existing art and doing so in such a
way as to enable our insights to be tested the way scientific theories are
usually tested.
Kirsch, Russell, Experiments with a Computer Learning Routine, Seminar Notes, NBS, (1954) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1954_artificial.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, L. Cahn, L.C.Ray, G.H.Urban Experiments with Processing Pictorial Information with a Digital Computer, Proceedings of the Eastern Joint Computer Conference, December 9-13, 1957, Inst. Radio Eng. and Assn. Computing Mach., (1957) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_experiments_pict.pdf
Ray, L.C., Kirsch, Russell, Finding Chemical Records by Digital Computers, Science, 126:3278, 814-819, (1957) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_find_digital.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Syntactic Techniques in Information Retrieval, National Bureau of Standards Report 6662, (1960) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1960_nbs6662.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, The Application of Automata Theory to Problems in Information Retrieval, NBS-IR 7882, (1963) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1963_application_automata.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Computer Interpretation of English Text and Picture Patterns, IEEE Trans. Elect. Computers, EC-13, 363-379, (1964) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1964_computers.pdf
Lipkin, L.E., Watt, W.C., Kirsch, Russell, The Analysis, Synthesis, and Description of Biological Images, Ann. NY Academy of Science, 128:3, 984-1012, (1966) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1966_analysis_bio.pdf
Alt, F.L., Kirsch, Russell, Citation Searching and Bibliographic Coupling with Remote On-line Computer Access, Journal of Research, National Bureau of Standards , 72B:1, 61-78, (1968) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1968_citation.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Computer Determination of the Constituent Structure of Biological Images, Computers and Biomedical Research, 4, 315-328, (1971) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1971_comp_deter.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Resynthesis of Biological Images from Tree-Structured Decomposition Data, Graphic Languages, F. Nake and A. Rosenfeld (eds.), North Holland Pub. Co., Amsterdam, (1972) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1972_resyn.pdf
Graminski, E.L., Kirsch, Russell, Image Analysis in Paper Manufacturing, Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Soc. Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Processing, (1977) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1977_imagea.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Pictures as Primary Sources for Computer-Based Art History Data, Proceedings of the International Conference on Automatic Processing of Art History Data, (1984) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_making_art.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Describing Art Objects to Computers, AICARC: Bulletin of the Archives and Documentation Centers for Modern and Contemporary Art, 11/12:21/22, 40-44, (1984) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1984_desc_art.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Kirsch, J., The Structure of Paintings: Formal Grammar and Design, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 13, 163-176, (1986) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1986_structure.pdf
Petersen, Ivars, Computing Art: Can a Computer be Taught to Take a Paintings Measure?, Science News, 129:9, (1986) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1986_computing_art.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Kirsch, J., The Anatomy of Painting Style: Description with Computer Rules, Leonardo, 21:4, (1988) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1988_anatomy.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Ressler, Sandy , Kirsch, J., Computers Viewing Artists at Work, NATO ASI, Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, F65, (1988) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1988_compt_view.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Kirsch, J., Computer Grammars for the Syntactical Analysis of Paintings, World Art: Themes of Unity in Diversity, Acts of the 26th Intl. Congress of the History of Art, Penn. State University Press, University Park, PA., (1989) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1989_world_art.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, The History of Art History in the 21st Century, as Viewed from Computer Science: 20-20 Hindsight from the Year of the Same Name, Visual Resources, VI, 267-278, (1990) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1990_history_21.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Kirsch, J., Storing Art Images in Intelligent Computers, Leondardo, Electronic Art Supplemental Issue, 23:1, 47-54, (1990) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1990_storing_art.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Photogrammetric Reconstruction of Petroglyphs, American Indian Rock Art, 23, 177-182, (1997) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1997_photo_recon.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, SEAC and the Start of Image Processing at the National Bureau of Standards, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 20:2, (1998) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1998_SEAC_image.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Using Computers to Describe Style, American Indian Rock Art, 22, 153-160, (1998) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/kirsch_1998_computer_style.pdf
Kirsch, Russell, Computer Development at the National Bureau of Standards, NBS/NIST Classic Publication Volume, A Century of Excellence in Measurements, Standards, and Technology, (2000) www.nist.gov/msidlibrary/doc/develc.pdf