Tony Kroch

I remember vividly what it was like to be a graduate student in linguistics at MIT when I arrived in the fall of 1968. By then, the department that Noam and Morris had created a few years earlier was functioning fully. There was a spirit of optimism in Building 20 about the future of the field in light of Noam’s groundbreaking work. His new paradigm promised exciting empirical and theoretical advances. At the time, we students had an intense feeling of camaraderie because of our shared sense that we were in on a real scientific revolution. Of course, we were also living in a period of political and social upheaval, in which Noam participated very actively, as did several others of us. I am grateful for my experiences living in the environment that Noam and Morris fostered and for the scientific education that the whole faculty provided. It was a great time to be alive.