Makoto Nagao, an emeritus professor at Kyoto University who received the Order of Culture, developed an image processing technology that recognizes human faces and a machine translation system that translates English into Japanese, died of a cerebral infarction on the 23rd of this month. ..
I was 84 years old.
Mr. Nagao was born in Mie Prefecture in 1945 and studied information engineering at the Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University.
Continuing research on analyzing images and words using computers, we have developed technology for reading handwritten numbers in zip codes and technology for recognizing human faces with images. Contributed to the development.
We also worked on the development of software that translates English into Japanese, and proposed a mechanism called "example translation" that improves the accuracy of translation by storing a huge number of bilingual examples in a computer.
He has served as the president of Kyoto University, the president of the Japan Association of National Universities, and the director of the National Diet Library.
He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1997 and the Order of Culture in 2018.
According to his family, Mr. Nagao fell and hit his head in April and continued medical treatment in Kyoto City, but died of a cerebral infarction on the 23rd of this month.
I was 84 years old.
The funeral was held only by close relatives.