In his mid-90s and still in good health, Summit was hit by a car at The Forum, a retirement community in Cupertino, California, where he lived, and taken to Stanford Hospital. He did not survive the accident.
A Stanford University graduate (BA,MA, and PhD), he joined Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. in 1960 and began work on what would become Dialog in 1968, thanks to a contract from NASA. Other contracts followed, allowing Dialog to launch commercially in 1972. It was spun off into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lockheed in 1982 with Summit as president. After several ownership changes, including Knight-Ridder, MAID, and ProQuest, it is now part of Clarivate.
He was interviewed by Susanne Bjørner and Stephanie C. Ardito in part 4 of "Online Before the Internet: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories" in 2003. A full biography is on Wikipedia.
Summit was a long-time supporter of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP) and was still active, participating on a panel discussion at the virtual AIIP symposium only a few months before his death.
He received many awards over his career, but was most proud of the 2019 IEEE Milestone Award for Dialog. The plaque can be seen at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The video of his acceptance speech is here.
He was also a talented musician, playing piano and trombone. A video of Geoffrey Sharpe and Summit playing a duet during Covid is here .
Choosing the name Dialog was prescient, reflecting his vision that effective search wasn’t a single query but an iterative conversation—a back-and-forth between searcher and system to clarify and refine a query, which is now embedded in the newest versions of AI searching. Summit built the foundation upon which today’s online search systems stands. His legacy endures in every search box we use today and in the community of information professionals he influenced. RIP Roger.