Jean Aitchison (2) (1925–2020)

Jean Aitchison, née Binns, was born in Huddersfield,Yorkshire, England. At the outbreak of World War II, her secondary school was relocated to the magnificent Chatsworth House, which made a deep and lasting impression on her. Jean went on to read history at University College London (UCL), although her studies there were also disrupted by the war when the students and faculty were evacuated to Wales. Jean graduated with Honours and returned to UCL to obtain a diploma in library science in 1948. She worked for a series of public sector libraries, and was appointed to set up a new Commercial and Technical library at Kingston-upon-Hull. Then she joined the English Electric company to start a technical library for their research and development site. During this time, she joined the influential Classification Research Group (CRG), a think tank that explored and extended the principles of faceted classification and information retrieval. In 1961, she married Tom Aitchison, with whom she had two children. She began working as an independent library consultant, eventually specializing in thesaurus design and construction. In 1969, she led a team of collaborators in the compilation and publication of Thesaurofacet. With Alan Gilchrist, she co-authored the first edition of Thesaurus Construction: A Practical Manual (1972), now a classic text that has gone through numerous editions. Subsequent books included the Thesaurus on Youth for the UK National Youth Bureau, the second edition of UNHCR’s International Thesaurus of Refugee Terminology, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs Thesaurus. In addition, she advised the developers of many more knowledge organization systems, and from 1975 to 1990 ran the training course on thesaurus construction offered regularly by Aslib.