Incubator escapee wiki

Lotfi A. Zadeh

Article Discussion

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist

Lotfi Aliasger Zadeh<ref name="NAE"/> (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Template:Langx;<ref name="UT">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 4 February 1921 – 6 September 2017)<ref name=ucbnews /><ref name=ap /> was a mathematician, computer scientist, electrical engineer, artificial intelligence researcher, and professor<ref name=cv /> 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,<ref name="FuzzySets1965" /> fuzzy logic,<ref name="FuzzyLogicEqualIEEE1996" /> fuzzy algorithms,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> fuzzy semantics,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> fuzzy languages,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> fuzzy control,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> fuzzy systems,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> fuzzy probabilities,<ref name="doi10.1016/0306-45738490067-0">Template:Cite journal</ref> fuzzy events,<ref name="doi10.1016/0306-45738490067-0"/> and fuzzy information.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Zadeh was a founding member of the Eurasian Academy.<ref name=ucbnews /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early life and careerEdit

AzerbaijanEdit

Zadeh was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR,<ref>At this time, the Azerbaijan SSR was an independent republic, created by the Red Army. It would become part of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in March 1922, and then part of the Soviet Union in December 1922.</ref> as Lotfi Aliasgerzadeh.<ref name=FL17>McNeil & Freiberger, p. 17</ref> His father was Rahim Aleskerzade, an Iranian Muslim Azerbaijani<ref>Blair, Betty (winter 1994) "Interview with Lotfi Zadeh" Azerbaijan International. "Obstinacy and tenacity. Not being afraid to get embroiled in controversy. That's very much a Turkish tradition. That's part of my character, too" http://azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/24_folder/24_articles/24_fuzzylogic.html</ref> journalist from Ardabil on assignment from Iran, and his mother was Fanya (Feyga<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh">Template:Cite magazine</ref>) Korenman, a Jewish pediatrician from Odesa, Ukraine, who was an Iranian citizen.<ref name="ScienceDirect.com 2015">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>"Jews in Computer & Information Science" Template:Webarchive on the JINFO.org website</ref><ref>Анвар Унугви "Жанет Селимова" Template:Webarchive (Memoirs of Lotfi A. Zadeh's cousin in Baku, theatrical director, professor Zhanet Selimova).</ref><ref name=bookrags>Gale, Thomson. Lotfi Asker Zadeh Biography Template:Webarchive World of Computer Science</ref> The Soviet government at this time courted foreign correspondents, and the family lived well while in Baku.<ref name=FL18>McNeil & Freiberger, p. 18</ref> Zadeh attended elementary school for three years there,<ref name=FL18 /> which he said "had a significant and long-lasting influence on my thinking and my way of looking at things."<ref name=blair99>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

IranEdit

In 1931, when Stalin began agricultural collectivization,<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> and Zadeh was ten, his father moved his family back to Tehran, Iran. Zadeh was enrolled in Alborz High School, a missionary school,<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> where he was educated for the next eight years, and where he met his future wife,<ref name=FL18 /> Fay (Faina<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/>) 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."<ref name=blair99 /> During this time, Zadeh was awarded several patents.<ref name=FL18 />

Zadeh sat for the Iran national university exams and placed third in the nation.<ref name=FL18 /> 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.<ref name=FL19>McNeil & Freiberger, p. 19</ref>

United StatesEdit

In 1943, Zadeh decided to leave for the United States to continue his education.<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> 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.Template:Citation needed He arrived in mid-1944, lived in New York and worked for an electronic association,<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> and entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a graduate student in September that year.<ref name=FL19 /><ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> 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.<ref name=FL17 /> 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.<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> Zadeh then applied to Columbia University.<ref name=FL19 /><ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> Columbia admitted him as a doctoral student and offered him an instructorship as well.<ref name=FL19 /> He received his PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia in 1949 and became an assistant professor the next year.<ref name=bookrags/><ref name=FL19 /> 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.<ref name="visions.az-Samad-Zadeh"/> 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.<ref name="gf.org-fellows-Zadeh">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>Zadeh, Lotfi and Desoer, Charles, Linear System Theory: The State Space Approach, Courier Dover Publications, 2008 (reprint).</ref> 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):

  • fuzzy control – a practical approach to non-linear control using fuzzy if-then rules in fuzzy logic
  • fuzzy pattern recognition – a generalization of conventional pattern recognition techniques using fuzzy sets (e.g., fuzzy k-means generalizes k-means clustering)
  • fuzzy database – generalizes classical database query language using fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic
  • fuzzy mathematics – generalizes conventional mathematics using fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic
  • neuro-fuzzy systems – a synergistic combination of fuzzy logic and neural networks, providing the first interpretable AI system based on neural network learning

He was also on the Board of Governors for International Neural Network Society (INNS) in 2003.

Impacts to higher educationEdit

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, 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.<ref>Lotfi A Zadeh, Academic Senate, University of California</ref>

Personal life and beliefsEdit

Template:External media

Zadeh photographed people around him.<ref name="zadeh-portraits">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:Anchor Zadeh was called "quick to shrug off nationalism, insisting there are much deeper issues in life", and was quoted as saying in an interview: "The question really isn't whether I'm American, Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani, or anything else. I've been shaped by all these people and cultures, and I feel quite comfortable among all of them."<ref name="Blaire_Short_Biographical">Template:Cite magazine</ref> He noted in the same interview: "Obstinacy and tenacity, not being afraid to get embroiled in controversy – that's very much a Turkish tradition. That's part of my character, too. I can be very stubborn. That has probably been beneficial for the development of fuzzy logic."<ref name="Blaire_Interview">Template:Cite magazine</ref> He described himself as "an American, mathematically oriented, electrical engineer of Iranian descent, born in Russia."<ref name=bookrags />

He and his wife Fay Zadeh had two children, Stella and Norman Zada. His wife wrote a book, My Life and Travels with the Father of Fuzzy Logic<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> about their travels and experiences together, visiting "exotic places" and meeting interesting people around the world.

Zadeh died in his home in Berkeley, California,<ref name=nytobit /> on 6 September 2017, at the age of 96.<ref name=ucbnews /><ref name=ap />Template:Unreliable source? He was buried at the First Alley of Honors, on 29 September 2017<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in Baku, Azerbaijan, the city in which he was born.<ref name=nytobit /> His funeral was well attended by "highly respected people."<ref>Brewer, Jared and Shakeel, Azwar (September 17, 2017) "UC Berkeley professor, creator of 'fuzzy logic' Lotfi Zadeh dies at 96" Template:Webarchive The Daily Californian</ref> A month prior to his death, the University of Tehran had released an erroneous report that Zadeh had died, but withdrew it several days later.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

WorkEdit

File:Lotfi A. Zadeh stamp 2021.png
Stamp of Azerbaijan dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Lotfi A. Zadeh

According to Google Scholar, as of November 2021, Zadeh's work has been cited at least 269,091 times in scholarly works,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> with the 1965 Fuzzy sets paper receiving at least 122,743 citations.<ref name="scholar.google-S6H-0RAAAAAJ:QKtdBID3u5MC">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Fuzzy sets and systemsEdit

Zadeh, in his theory of fuzzy sets, proposed using a membership function (with a range covering the interval [0,1]) operating on the domain of all possible values. He proposed new operations for the calculus of logic and showed that fuzzy logic was a generalisation of classical and Boolean logic. He also proposed fuzzy numbers as a special case of fuzzy sets, as well as the corresponding rules for consistent mathematical operations (fuzzy arithmetic).<ref>McNeil & Freiberger, passim</ref>

Fuzzy logic and artificial intelligenceEdit

Zadeh's research career has had a lasting impact on artificial intelligence (AI). Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic are both motivated by our understanding of human cognition: that we are comfortable with concepts that have vague boundaries. This is well aligned with the Physical symbol system assumption in AI (by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon), inspired by another aspect of human cognition: that humans are comfortable with concepts that are described by symbols.

The concept of a linguistic variable in fuzzy logic connects a symbol that is typically a predicate in classical logic (e.g., "John is Bold", or in predicate logic – Bold(John)) – to linguistic values (e.g., "John is somewhat bold." or in fuzzy logic – Bold(John)=Somewhat ) – which generalizes the binary value of predicate logic in two ways. First, the two possible values (True or False) in predicate logic are generalized to a continuum (typically from 0, which corresponds to False, to 1, which corresponds to True). This allows the expression of Bold(John)= 0.5, which indicates that John is midway between being devoid of boldness and being entirely bold.

The second generalization enabled by fuzzy logic is to use a fuzzy set such as "somewhat bold" to describe a person's boldness level in a way that is more natural to human understanding and communication. Without this generalization, we can only describe the value of a person's boldness as a number (e.g., 0.5) or as an interval (e.g., [0.25, 0.75]). With this generalization, one can express the semantic meaning of "somewhat bold" as a fuzzy set in the domain of 0 and 1.

Zadeh was also an active contributor to the AI community, including at the Dartmouth Workshop that coined the term "artificial intelligence". He was subsequently a frequent contributor to leading AI conferences such as AAAI and IJCAI, as well as other top venues such as AI Magazine.

Other contributionsEdit

Zadeh is credited, along with John R. Ragazzini, in 1952, with having pioneered the development of the Z-transform method in discrete time signal processing and analysis. These methods are now standard in digital signal processing, digital control, and other discrete-time systems used in industry and research. He was an editor of the International Journal of Computational Cognition.

Zadeh's work also included computing with words and perceptions. His later papers include "From Search Engines to Question-Answering Systems"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and "Toward a Generalized Theory of Uncertainty (GTU)—An Outline".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Selected publicationsEdit

A complete list of publications is available.<ref name="Complete List" />

Template:Refbegin

Template:Refend

LecturesEdit

  • 1991 - Fuzzy logic: principles, perspectives, and applications Lecture sponsored by the Dept. of Electrical and Computer engineering, University of California, San Diego. Electrical and Computer Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series. Digital Object Made Available by UC San Diego Library.

Awards and honorsEdit

File:Lütfi Zadənin məzarı.jpg
Grave of Lotfi A. Zadeh in Baku.

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.<ref name="NAE">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name=cv />

Awards received by Zadeh include, among many others:

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Eringen Medal; 1976
  • IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, for "seminal contributions to information science and systems, including the conceptualization of fuzzy sets"; 1992<ref name=ucbnews /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

LegacyEdit

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.<ref>"Lotfi A. Zadeh Pioneer Award" Template:Webarchive IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society website</ref>

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.<ref>Staff (25 February 2019) "Presentation of Inaugural Lotfi Zadeh Scholarships" Template:Webarchive ADA University website</ref>

On 4 February 2021, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and the International Fuzzy Systems Association (IFSA) jointly celebrated the centenary of Zadeh's birth.<ref>Staff (April 15, 2021) "Celebrating the centenary of Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017)" Template:Webarchive IEEE.TV</ref>

On 30 November 2021, Google honored Zadeh with a Google Doodle.<ref name="GoogleDoodle">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His seminal paper Fuzzy sets was submitted for publication on this day in 1964.<ref name="FuzzySets1965"/><ref name="GoogleDoodle"/>

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

CitationsEdit

Template:Reflist

General bibliographyEdit

Template:Refbegin

Template:Refend

Further readingEdit

Template:Refbegin

Template:Refend

External linksEdit

Template:Sister project Template:Sister project

|CitationClass=web }}

Template:Navboxes

Template:Authority control Template:Mathematics in Iran

Retrieved from "https://zalansite.site/mediawiki/index.php?title=Lotfi_A._Zadeh&oldid=140798"