John F. Sowa is an American computer scientist known for his work in artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, and ontology. He has contributed significantly to the development of conceptual graphs, a formalism for representing knowledge in a structured way. His research has influenced various fields, including linguistics and cognitive science. Sowa has authored several books and papers, including "Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations." He has also been involved in the development of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and has worked on projects related to semantic web technologies. His contributions continue to impact the way knowledge is organized and utilized in computer systems.