Lotfi A. Zadeh
Lotfi Aliasker Zadeh[5] (/ˈzɑːdeɪ/; Azerbaijani: Lütfi Rəhim oğlu Ələsgərzadə;[6] Persian: لطفی علیعسکرزاده;[2] 4 February 1921 – 6 September 2017)[1][3] was a mathematician, computer scientist, electrical engineer, artificial intelligence researcher, and professor[7] of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Zadeh is best known for proposing fuzzy mathematics, consisting of several fuzzy-related concepts: fuzzy sets,[8] fuzzy logic,[9] fuzzy algorithms,[10] fuzzy semantics,[11] fuzzy languages,[12] fuzzy control,[13] fuzzy systems,[14] fuzzy probabilities,[15] fuzzy events,[15] and fuzzy information.[16] Zadeh was a founding member of the Eurasian Academy.[1][17]
Lotfi A. Zadeh
Founder of fuzzy mathematics,
fuzzy set theory, and fuzzy logic, Z numbers, Z-transform
Fay Zadeh
2, including Norman Zada
Eringen Medal (1976)
IEEE Hamming Medal (1992)[1]
Rufus Oldenburger Medal (1993)
IEEE Medal of Honor (1995)[1]
2012 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
Honorary Doctorate of Tehran University (2016)[2]
ACM Fellow
IEEE Fellow
AAAS Fellow
AAAI Fellow
Member of the National Academy of Engineering
Founding Member of Eurasian Academy
Early life and career
Azerbaijan
Zadeh was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR,[18] as Lotfi Aliaskerzadeh.[19] His father was Rahim Aleskerzade, an Iranian Muslim Azerbaijani[20] journalist from Ardabil on assignment from Iran, and his mother was Fanya (Feyga[21]) Korenman, a Jewish pediatrician from Odesa, Ukraine, who was an Iranian citizen.[22][23][24][25] The Soviet government at this time courted foreign correspondents, and the family lived well while in Baku.[26] Zadeh attended elementary school for three years there,[26] which he said "had a significant and long-lasting influence on my thinking and my way of looking at things."[27]
Iran
In 1931, when Stalin began agricultural collectivization,[21] and Zadeh was ten, his father moved his family back to Tehran, Iran. Zadeh was enrolled in Alborz High School, a missionary school,[21] where he was educated for the next eight years, and where he met his future wife,[26] Fay (Faina[21]) Zadeh, who said that he was "deeply influenced" by the "extremely decent, fine, honest and helpful" Presbyterian missionaries from the United States who ran the college. "To me they represented the best that you could find in the United States – people from the Midwest with strong roots. They were really 'Good Samaritans' – willing to give of themselves for the benefit of others. So this kind of attitude influenced me deeply. It also instilled in me a deep desire to live in the United States."[27] During this time, Zadeh was awarded several patents.[26]
Zadeh sat for the Iran national university exams and placed third in the nation.[26] As a student, he ranked first in his class in his first two years. In 1942, he graduated from the University of Tehran with a degree in electrical engineering, one of only three students in that field to graduate that year, due to the turmoil created by World War II, when the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran. Over 30,000 American soldiers were based there, and Zadeh worked with his father, who did business with them as a contractor for hardware and building materials.[28]
United States
In 1943, Zadeh decided to leave for the United States to continue his education.[21] He travelled to Philadelphia by way of Cairo after months of delay waiting first for the proper papers and later for the right ship to appear. He arrived in mid-1944, lived in New York and worked for an electronic association,[21] and entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a graduate student in September that year.[28][21] While in the United States, he shortened his family name, creating a new middle name from the part he removed, and was thenceforth known as Lotfi Aliasker Zadeh.[19] He received an MS degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1946.
In 1947, as his parents had settled in New York City, Zadeh went to work as an engineer at Columbia University.[21] Zadeh then applied to Columbia University.[28][21] Columbia admitted him as a doctoral student and offered him an instructorship as well.[28] He received his PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia in 1949 and became an assistant professor the next year.[25][28] Zadeh taught for ten years at Columbia and was promoted to full professor in 1957.
The chairman of the electronic engineering department at the University of California, wrote and offered him work.[21] In 1959, Zadeh joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. During his lengthy research career, Zadeh made important scientific contributions in two distinct areas: (1) linear system theory and classical control systems, and (2) fuzzy sets, fuzzy logic, and related science and technology.
Zadeh was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 for Natural Sciences in Applied Mathematics.[29]
Zadeh's first important research contribution, well known among scholars of his generation in the electrical engineering community, was in the area of classical control systems. His pioneer work, co-authored with Charles Desoer, Linear System Theory: The State Space Approach, laid a critical foundation for all modern approaches to system analysis and control.[30] The second and more well-known contribution of Zadeh's research is his lifelong dedication to the creation, enhancement and the real-world impacts of a broad collection of science and technology based on fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic. He published his seminal work on fuzzy sets in 1965, in which he described the motivation of replicating human-like reasoning and detailed the mathematics of fuzzy set theory.
In 1973 he proposed his theory of fuzzy logic. Together, fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic provide the necessary foundations for a broad class of related innovations, including (but not limited to):
He was also on the Board of Governors for International Neural Network Society (INNIS) in 2003.
Impacts to higher education
Zadeh became the Chair of Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963. One of the lasting impacts of his leadership in this role is the expansion and the integration of computer science. He initiated and completed (in 1968) the transformation of the Electrical Engineering department at UC Berkeley to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). This strategic move not only led UC Berkeley's advancement into the top ranks of computer science education and research, but also led other research universities globally to add computer science to their electrical engineering departments.
In 1973, Lotfi Zadeh received the prestigious (Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers) IEEE Education Award, largely in recognition of his performance as chair of EE and then EECS. Other important services to UC Berkeley include his Academic Senate committee memberships: Academic Planning & Resource Allocation (1992–95); Committees (1969–70; 1980–81); Courses of Instruction (1975–80); and Faculty Awards (1990–92). Professor Zadeh graduated more than 50 PhD students, many of whom went on to become leaders in various areas of engineering, management and information sciences.[31]
Zadeh was a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the International Fuzzy Systems Association, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.[5] He was also a member of the Academies of Science of Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Finland, Korea and Poland, and of the International Academy of Systems Studies in Moscow. He received 24 honorary doctorates.[7]
Awards received by Zadeh include, among many others:
Legacy
In 2014, the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society established the "Lotfi A. Zadeh Pioneer Award", which is given to honour a person or persons with "outstanding and pioneering contributions to academic and/or industrial research in systems science and engineering, human-machine systems, and/or cybernetics." The award is funded from a $100,000 donation from Zadeh's son, Norm Zadeh, and is administered by the IEEE. Nominees must have "pioneered and developed innovative research, executed in either academe or industry," that has resulted in major scientific advances in "systems science and engineering, human-machine systems, and/or cybernetics." Contributions must have been made at least 15 years prior to the award date.[54]
In February 2019, ADA University in Baku, Azerbaijan presented the first "Lotfi Zadeh Scholarships", which honour the academic success of undergraduate students in the university's School of IT and Engineering. Winners of the scholarship receive a complete tuition waiver for the semester or semester-equivalent in which they achieved a 4.0 average.[55]
On 4 February 2021, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and the International Fuzzy Systems Association (IFSA) jointly celebrated the centenary of Zadeh's birth.[56]
On 30 November 2021, Google honored Zadeh with a Google Doodle.[57][58] His seminal paper Fuzzy sets was submitted for publication on this day in 1964.[8][57]