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Barry Smith (ontologist)
Barry Smith (born 4 June 1952) is an American mathematician, philosopher, and researcher in the field of Applied Ontology.
From 1970 to 1973, Smith studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester in 1976 for a dissertation on ontology and reference in Husserl and Frege. The dissertation was supervised by Wolfe Mays.
Among the cohort of graduate students supervised by Mays in Manchester at that time were Kevin Mulligan (Geneva/Lugano), and Peter Simons (Trinity College, Dublin). Both shared with Smith an interest in analytic metaphysics and in the contributions of turn-of-the-century Continental philosophers and logicians to central issues of analytic philosophy. In 1979 they together founded the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy, which organized workshops and conferences centered around the work of early Central European philosophers from Bolzano to Tarski and their impact on subsequent generations. A central role in this respect was played by Husserl's contributions to formal ontology. Roderick Chisholm refers to the role played by these meetings in contemporary philosophy.
Smith has held academic posts at the University of Sheffield, the University of Manchester, the International Academy of Philosophy (Liechtenstein), and since 1994 at the University at Buffalo. His students in Buffalo have included: Berit Brogaard, Leo Zaibert and John Beverley.
From 2002 to 2006, Smith served as Director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS), initially in Leipzig and then, from 2004, in Saarbrücken.
In 2005, Smith founded the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR), under the auspices of which he initiated in 2006 the Ontology for the Intelligence Community, subsequently STIDS, conference series. In 2009 he founded the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO).
From 1992 to 2016, Smith served as editor of The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry.
From 2016, he served as editor of international standard ISO/IEC 21838: Top Level Ontologies, Parts 1 and 2, which were published by ISO in 2021. Part 1 specifies the requirements for being a top-level (which means: domain-neutral) ontology. Part 2 is devoted to Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). In its issue of September 28, 2022 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung refers to BFO as the first example of a piece of philosophy that has been accepted as an industrial norm, describing this as a 'small sensation in the history of science'.
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Barry Smith (ontologist)
Barry Smith (born 4 June 1952) is an American mathematician, philosopher, and researcher in the field of Applied Ontology.
From 1970 to 1973, Smith studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester in 1976 for a dissertation on ontology and reference in Husserl and Frege. The dissertation was supervised by Wolfe Mays.
Among the cohort of graduate students supervised by Mays in Manchester at that time were Kevin Mulligan (Geneva/Lugano), and Peter Simons (Trinity College, Dublin). Both shared with Smith an interest in analytic metaphysics and in the contributions of turn-of-the-century Continental philosophers and logicians to central issues of analytic philosophy. In 1979 they together founded the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy, which organized workshops and conferences centered around the work of early Central European philosophers from Bolzano to Tarski and their impact on subsequent generations. A central role in this respect was played by Husserl's contributions to formal ontology. Roderick Chisholm refers to the role played by these meetings in contemporary philosophy.
Smith has held academic posts at the University of Sheffield, the University of Manchester, the International Academy of Philosophy (Liechtenstein), and since 1994 at the University at Buffalo. His students in Buffalo have included: Berit Brogaard, Leo Zaibert and John Beverley.
From 2002 to 2006, Smith served as Director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS), initially in Leipzig and then, from 2004, in Saarbrücken.
In 2005, Smith founded the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR), under the auspices of which he initiated in 2006 the Ontology for the Intelligence Community, subsequently STIDS, conference series. In 2009 he founded the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO).
From 1992 to 2016, Smith served as editor of The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry.
From 2016, he served as editor of international standard ISO/IEC 21838: Top Level Ontologies, Parts 1 and 2, which were published by ISO in 2021. Part 1 specifies the requirements for being a top-level (which means: domain-neutral) ontology. Part 2 is devoted to Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). In its issue of September 28, 2022 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung refers to BFO as the first example of a piece of philosophy that has been accepted as an industrial norm, describing this as a 'small sensation in the history of science'.