Memories of a Meeting with Professor Zadeh and His Wife Fay

Abstract

In the late 70’s, I started working for doctoral degree on the topic: Pumping System Reliability which involves stochastic modeling and differential equations. What was the outcome? A Good outcome: I was awarded a PhD degree, but a Not-So-Good Outcome was – the research had litle/ no practical relevance. In those days, I was Deputy Director in Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI)/CSIR India, and was asked by my engineer colleagues about its utility. Writing complex equations is good, but as an engineer, should I write complex equations all through my life? Does my brain works this way while taking real life decisions? – I was thinking almost daily about this and was getting disturbed.