Michael Sperberg-McQueen has died
C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen (1954-2024) was a prominent medieval German philologist who significantly contributed to XML and TEI, shaping digital humanities scholarship before his passing on August 16, 2024.
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C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen (1954-2024) was an influential American medieval German philologist and a specialist in markup languages. He played a pivotal role in the development of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 specification in 1998 and chaired the XML Schema working group. His contributions to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) were significant, as he co-edited the TEI's Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange in 1994 and served as editor-in-chief from 1988 to 2000. Sperberg-McQueen's work established foundational methods for digital humanities scholarship, impacting the encoding and interchange of electronic texts. He held a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University and taught extensively on topics related to markup systems and semantic theory. In 2015, he was a visiting professor at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, where he taught courses on Digital Humanities. He passed away on August 16, 2024, and was remembered by the TEI Consortium and Balisage for his contributions to the field.
- C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen was a key figure in the development of XML and TEI.
- He served as editor-in-chief of the TEI from 1988 to 2000.
- His work laid the groundwork for many digital humanities practices.
- He held a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University.
- Sperberg-McQueen passed away on August 16, 2024, leaving a significant legacy in markup languages.
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