John Florian Sowa is a computer scientist who invented conceptual graphs, a graphic notation for logic and natural language, based on the structures in semantic networks and on the existential graphs of Charles S. Peirce. He is currently developing high-level "ontologies" for artificial intelligence and automated natural language understanding. International conferences on conceptual graphs have been held for over a decade. Sowa combines ideas from numerous disciplines and eras modern and ancient, for example, applying ideas from Aristotle and Alfred North Whitehead to database schemas theory.
He spent most of his professional career at IBM and is currently teaching at SUNY Binghamton.
