A recognized innovator of machine translation and a key player in creating support for the scientific field in the United States. He was was granted membership into the National Academy of Sciences for his contributions in 1957.
During World War I, he was a second lieutenant in the Air Service.
He was President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received awards such as the Public Welfare Medal for his work.
He married Mary Hemenway and had one son Warren Jr. and a daughter Helen.
He was very interested in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and wrote a book called Alice in Many Tongues: The Translations of Alice in Wonderland about the translation history of Alice.
