Lotfi Asker Zadeh

Lotfi ali Asker Zadeh born February 4, 1921) is a mathematician and
computer scientist, and a professor of computer science at the University of California,
Berkeley.

Contents
1 Biography
2 Work
2.1 Fuzzy sets and systems
2.2 Other contributions
3 Publications
4 References
5 External links

Biography
He was born in Baku, of an Azeri father on assignment as a journalist from Iran, and a
Russian mother who was a pediatrician.[1]
(http://www.bookrags.com/biography/lotfiasker- zadeh-wcs/) However at the age of ten,
when Joseph Stalin introduced collectivization of farms throughout the Soviet Union, the
Zadeh family moved to Iran, his father's homeland. Zadeh grew up in Iran, studied at
Alborz High School. After high school, he sat for the national university exams and placed second in the entire country. In 1942, he was graduated from the University of Tehran in electrical engineering (Fanni), and
moved to the United States in 1944. He received an MS degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1946,
and a PhD in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 1949.
He taught for ten years at Columbia University and was promoted to full professor in 1957. He has taught at
the University of California, Berkeley since 1959. He published his seminal work on fuzzy sets in 1965 in
which he detailed the mathematics of fuzzy set theory. In 1973 he proposed his theory of fuzzy logic.
Zadeh is noted to be "quick to shrug off nationalism, insisting there are much deeper issues in life", where he
himself is quoted stating: "The question really isn't whether I'm American, Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani, or
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anything else. I've been shaped by all these people and cultures and I feel quite comfortable among all of
them."[1]
Zadeh also notes in the same interview from which the above quote is taken: "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's probably been beneficial for the development of Fuzzy
Logic."[2]
Zadeh is married to Fay Zadeh and has two children, Stella Zadeh and Norman Zadeh.
Awards
In 1994 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. He was awarded the
IEEE Medal of Honor in 1995 "For pioneering development of fuzzy logic and its many diverse applications."
Zadeh has a long list of achievements, but since 2003, Zadeh has received the following awards.
In 1993 Azerbaijan bestowed him an honorary Professorship from the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy.
Outstanding Contribution Award, Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), Halifax, Canada, 2003.
Wall of Fame, Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF), Paderborn, Germany, 2004.
Civitate Honoris Causa, Budapest Tech Polytechnical Institution, Budapest, Hungary; Sept. 4, 2004.
Doctor Honoris Causa, Muroran Institute of Technology, Muroran, Japan; Oct. 29, 2004.
Doctor Honoris Causa, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China; Nov. 9, 2004.
V. Kaufmann Prize and Gold Medal, International Association for Fuzzy-Set Management and
Economy (SIGEF), Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 15, 2004.
Foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 2005.
Nicolaus Copernicus Medal of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 2005.
J. Keith Brimacombe IPMM Award in recognition of his development of fuzzy set theory and fuzzy
logic, 2005.
Doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; Jan. 29, 2007.
Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award
Doctor Honoris Causa, Ryerson University, Toronto , Ontario, Canada; June 10th 2008.
Zadeh's most recent recognition comes from The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Lotfi Zadeh receives the
2009 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering for inventing and developing the field of “fuzzy
logic,” in which a system applies a quantitative assessment to inherently ambiguous ideas, thus providing a
new paradigm to improve artificial intelligence and automated control systems.
Work
Because of the importance of the relaxation of Aristotelian logic, which opens up applicability of rational
methods to the majority of practical situations without dichotomous truth values, Zadeh is one of the most
referenced authors in the fields of applied mathematics and computer science, but – as noted below – his
contributions are not limited to fuzzy sets and systems.
Fuzzy sets and systems
Aristotle introduced the laws of thought, which consisted of three fundamental laws:
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Principle of identity
Law of the excluded middle
Law of contradiction
The law of the excluded middle states that for all propositions p, either p or ~p must be true, there being no
middle true proposition between them. This should not be confused with the principle of bivalence, which
states that either p must be true or false.
Jan 􀃠ukasiewicz was the first to propose a systematic alternative to the bi-valued logic of Aristotle and
described the 3-valued logic, with the third value beingPossible. Zadeh, in his theory of fuzzy logic,
proposed the making of the membership function operate over the range of real numbers in the interval [0,1].
He proposed new operations for the calculus of logic and showed that fuzzy logic was a generalisation of
classical logic.
Other contributions
Lotfi Zadeh is also 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.
Zadeh's latest work includes computing with words and perceptions. His recent papers include From Search
Engines to Question-Answering Systems—The Role of Fuzzy Logic (http://wwwbisc.
cs.berkeley.edu/zadeh/papers/From%20Search%20Engines%20to%20Question-
Answering%20Systems...2006.pdf) , Progress in Informatics, No. 1, 1-3, 2005; and Toward a Generalized
Theory of Uncertainty (GTU)—An Outline (http://wwwbisc.
cs.berkeley.edu/BISCSE2005/Zadeh2005.pdf) , Information Sciences, Elsevier, Vol. 172, 1-40, 2005.
Publications
Zadeh wrote several articles. A selection:
1965. Fuzzy sets. Information and Control. 1965; 8: 338–353.
1965. Fuzzy sets and systems. In: Fox J, editor. System Theory. Brooklyn, NY: Polytechnic Press,
1965: 29–39.
1972. A fuzzy-set-theoretical interpretation of linguistic hedges. Journal of Cybernetics 1972; 2: 4–34.
1973.Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes. IEEE
Trans. Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 1973; 3: 28–44.
1974. Fuzzy logic and its application to approximate reasoning. In:Information Processing 74, Proc.
IFIP Congr. 1974 (3), pp. 591–594.
1975. Fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning. Synthese, 1975; 30: 407–428.
1975. Calculus of fuzzy restrictions. In: Zadeh LA, Fu KS, Tanaka K, Shimura M, editors. Fuzzy Sets
and their Applications to Cognitive and Decision Processes. New York: Academic Press, 1975:

Lotfi ali Asker Zadeh

Born February 4, 1921
Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, USSR
Residence United States
Nationality Iranian- Azerbaijanian, American
Fields Mathematics
Institutions U.C. Berkeley
Alma mater Columbia University
Known for Founder of Fuzzy Mathematics,
fuzzy set theory, and fuzzy logic
Notable awards IEEE Medal of Honor