A Tribute to Lotfi Zadeh with Personal Recollections

Abstract

Isaac Newton once wrote to Robert Hooke that (with slight paraphrasing) “If we have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Life has an interesting way of presenting opportunities for collaboration between us lesser mortals who are catalyzed by such giants. Certainly that has been our experience in our own collaborations over the past several years, with the “giant” in this case being Professor Lotfi Zadeh. Lotfi’s pervasive inquiries into the nature of human reasoning, and his assemblage of a sophisticated mathematical apparatus enabling humble machines to mimic this marvel of cognition, however imperfectly, stand as one of the towering intellectual accomplishments of the past century.In this tribute, we are pleased to recount some of our experiences that have benefitted from a larger view of the horizon provided by standing upon Lotfi’s broad shoulders.