Michael M. Richter is a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 and computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

. Richter is well known for his career in mathematical logic, in particular non-standard analysis

Non-standard analysis

Non-standard analysis is a branch of mathematics that formulates analysis using a rigorous notion of an infinitesimal number.Non-standard analysis was introduced in the early 1960s by the mathematician Abraham Robinson. He wrote:...

, and in artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, in particular in knowledge-based systems

Knowledge-based systems

Knowledge based systems are artificial intelligent tools working in a narrow domain to provide intelligent decisions with justification. Knowledge is acquired and represented using various knowledge representation techniques rules, frames and scripts...

 and case-based reasoning

Case-based reasoning

Case-based reasoning , broadly construed, is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems. An auto mechanic who fixes an engine by recalling another car that exhibited similar symptoms is using case-based reasoning...

 (CBR, Fallbasiertes Schließen). He is worldwide known as pioneer in case-based reasoning

Case-based reasoning

Case-based reasoning , broadly construed, is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems. An auto mechanic who fixes an engine by recalling another car that exhibited similar symptoms is using case-based reasoning...

.

Life

Richter studied mathematics 1959–1965 at the University of Münster

University of Münster

The University of Münster is a public university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The WWU is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities...

 and the University of Freiburg

University of Freiburg

The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...

, where he completed his Ph.D. on Mathematical Logic

Mathematical logic

Mathematical logic is a subfield of mathematics with close connections to foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic. The field includes both the mathematical study of logic and the applications of formal logic to other areas of mathematics...

 under the supervision of Walter Felscher and he performed his Habilitation in 1973 in Mathematics at the University of Tübingen. After teaching at the University of Texas at Austin

University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...

 he was Professor for Mathematics at the RWTH Aachen

RWTH Aachen

RWTH Aachen University is a research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with roughly 33,000 students enrolled in 101 study programs....

 from 1975 to 1986. 1986 he accepted a chair for Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern

University of Kaiserslautern

The University of Kaiserslautern is a university in Kaiserslautern, Germany. It was founded in 1970 and is organized into 12 faculties.-History:...

 where he was teaching until his retirement in 2003. He was several times teaching at Austin

Austin

Austin is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas.Austin may also refer to:-In the United States:*Austin, Arkansas*Austin, Colorado*Austin, Chicago, Illinois*Austin, Indiana*Austin, Minnesota*Austin, Nevada*Austin, Oregon...

, Florianopolis

Florianópolis

-Climate:Florianópolis experiences a warm humid subtropical climate, falling just short of a true tropical climate. The seasons of the year are distinct, with a well-defined summer and winter, and characteristic weather for autumn and spring. Frost is infrequent, but occurs occasionally in the winter...

 and Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

. He was also teaching at the University of St. Gallen

University of St. Gallen

The University of St. Gallen is a public research university located in St. Gallen, Switzerland. It is specialized in the fields of business administration, economics, law, and international affairs. The University of St. Gallen is also known as HSG, which is an abbreviation of its former German...

 from 1994 to 2000 on Decision Support and Operations Research. Presently he is Adjunct Professor at the University of Calgary

University of Calgary

The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...

 and Visiting Professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Federal University of Santa Catarina is a public university in Florianópolis, the capital city of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil....

, Florianopolis, Brazil. In this time 64 students completed their PhD thesis and 293 students their diploma and masters thesis under his supervision. Many of them now hold professorships in various parts of the world.

In his spare time he goes running and has run many marathons.

Activities

From 1981 to 1985 Michael Richter was President of the German Association of Mathematical Logic and Basic Research in the Exact Sciences (DVMLG Deutsche Vereinigung für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der exakten Wissenschaften). Starting 1987 he was for five years co-initiator and co-chair of an annual series of conferences Logic in Computer Science.
In 1989 Michael Richter became head of the research group Mathematical Logic (until 2004) from the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften). There he continued and extended the Omega Bibliography, a world wide unique scientific collection containing all publications in Mathematical Logic since 1889 in classified way.
In Kaiserslautern he was member of the managing committee of two consecutive special research groups of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is an important German research funding organization and the largest such organization in Europe.-Function:...

 (DFG): Artificial Intelligence and Development of Large Systems with Generic Methods.
In 1988 he was one of the founders of the DFKI at Kaiserslautern, the German Research Center on Artificial Intelligence, the first scientific director and later on head of the Intelligent Engineering Group. He was one of the forerunners in turning static expert systems into flexible assistant systems. An outstanding project was ARC-TEC: Acquisition, Representation and Compilation of Technical Knowledge.
After 1990, his university group was participating in literally all major European projects on Case-Based Reasoning. The most influential project was Highlights of the European INRECA Projects (Inductive Reasoning on Cases), where a basic methodology was developed. In 1993 the group initiated the first European Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning in Kaiserslautern (EWCBR) which was after that a biannual event and complemented by the International Conferences on CBR (ICCBR 2007).

Work

In logic Michael Richter specialized on non-standard analysis where he wrote a monograph and created with his student B. Benninghofen the Theory of Superinfinitesimals. Under the influence of W.W. Bledsoe he became interested in Artificial Intelligence. In Aachen he developed the first and still only program to apply rewrite rules to group theory. In Software Engineering his group concentrated on process modeling. In his group the MILOS-System was developed. It was leading in process modeling and is now substantially extended by Frank Maurer in Calgary to the system MASE. Together with his student Aldo v. Wangenheim he created the Cyclops group, that worked on image understanding, and developed new tools based on configuration system. This research gave now rise to various applications and is heavily continued in Florianopolis, Brazil. Around 1990 Michael Richter started to work on Case-Based Reasoning. Initially, it was an extension of the work on technical expert systems. He introduced several basic concepts and views in CBR. A very influential one was the notion knowledge containers. It is basic for building and maintaining CBR systems. He made several important and systematic contributions to the notion of similarity. These include the relation of similarity measures to general concepts of uncertainty and the knowledge contained in similarity measures. On the foundational side his group related similarity to utility and Michael Richter gave a formal semantics of similarity in terms of utilities. Since 1990 Michael Richter was concerned with combining basic research and useful applications. As an example, his group founded tecinno company (now empolis

Empolis

Empolis, an Attensity Group company, is a content management and knowledge management software company owned by Attensity Empolis Europe GmbH .Empolis is coordinator of the research program THESEUS.- Products :...

) which is a very successful company in “selling CBR and knowledge management“.

Some major publications

Michael M. Richter has written numerous publications in Mathematics, General Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Medical Informatics and Operations Research. He has written and/or edited 25 books. Some influential publications are:

• B. Benninghofen, Michael M. Richter: A general theory of superinfinitesimals. Fundamenta Mathematicae 128 (1987), pp. 199-215.
• The Knuth-Bendix Completion Procedure, the Growth Function and Polycyclic Groups. In: Proc. Logic Colloquium ’86, ed. F. Drake, J. Truss, North-Holland Publ. Co. pp. 261-275.
• B. Benninghofen, S. Kemmerich, Michael M. Richter: Systems of Reductions. SLN in Computer Science 277 (1987); 265 + VII p.
• Michael M. Richter, S. Wess: Similarity, Uncertainty and Case-Based Reasoning in PATDEX. In: R. S. Boyer (Ed.), Automated Reasoning, Essays in Honor of Woody Bledsoe, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
• Recent Developments in Case-Based Reasoning: Improvements of Similarity Measures. In: New Approaches in Classification and Data Analysis, ed. E. Diday, Y. Lechevallier, M. Schader, P. Bertrand, B. Burtschy, Springer Verlag 1994, S. 594-601.
• Michael M. Richter, Agnar Aamodt: Case-based reasoning foundations. Knowledge Engineering Review,20:3 Cambridge University Press, p. 203-207 (2006).
• Foundations of Similarity and Utility. Proc. Flairs 07, AAAI Press
• Similarity. In: Case-Based Reasoning for Signals and Imaging, ed. Petra Perner, Springer Verlag 2007, pp.25-90.

External links

• http://wwwagse.informatik.uni-kl.de/research/sfb501/a2/pubs.html
• http://www.dfki.de/web/research/km/publications/base_view?pubid=2115
• http://www.springerlink.com/content/b8qdp9wfalxxfljh/