ALBAWABA - Mohammed AlSharekh, the Kuwaiti businessman and entrepreneur known for his contribution to the computer industry by developing the first computer operating software that supported the Arabic language, has passed away at 82 as mourned by Kuwait’s National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters.
In 1980, AlSharekh founded AlAlamiah Group, later followed with its subsidiary Sakhr Software Company in 1982, it took the firm more than ten years to complete the creation of automated morphology and automatic diacritizer, introducing Arabic Natural Language Processing (NLP) approaches in a time when computers where exclusively designed for English language.
Sakhr Software Company (SSC) later went to create groundbreaking software and hardware solutions, becoming the first company in the region to receive 3 US patents in the field for Arabic handwriting recognition, automatic Arabic translation and optical character recognition (OCR).
In addition to co-founding and serving as chair of the board of directors of the Industrial Bank of Kuwait, AlSharekh also held positions as vice chairman of the Association of Arab Economists and as deputy director general for the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development from 1969 to 1973.
AlSharekh also represented Kuwait and the Arab Group at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (I.B.R.D.) in Washington, D.C. From 1973 to 1975.
He was responsible for developing the first Quran software and the English software for nine Hadith books, the Islamic Information Archive, OCR in 1994, Arabic Text to Speech in 1998, machine translation from and into Arabic in 2002, automatic speech translation in 2010, and more than ninety educational and programming applications for Arab youngsters.
With numerous local and global awards and recognitions, Mohammed AlSharekh will be remembered as an Arabic and international figure who pushed the boundaries of computer software making it accessible for millions worldwide, and a prominent idol for aspiring Arab entrepreneurs.
