Lotfi Zadeh, Fuzzy Sets, and I: A Personal Odyssey

When I immigrated to the United States in 1966 (see [1] for details), I was fortunate to begin my academic career at UCLA. Although I taught courses in computer architecture and design, I was primarily interested at that time in developing a general theory of systems. This motivated me to arrange a meeting with Lotfi Zadeh in Berkeley shortly after I settled in Los Angeles. I knew and admired his work in system theory, and I wanted to exchange ideas with him in this area. The meeting went very well. When I was about to leave, he mentioned that he had just embarked on research in a radically new area – a theory of fuzzy sets. He gave me a signed reprint of his paper, published just a few months before my visit, in which he outlined basic ideas of this envisioned new area [2]. This was my first acquaintance with Lotfi Zadeh and with fuzzy sets, which influenced my academic life in a profound way. As is explained later, fuzzy set theory has eventually become one of my primary research interests, and Lotfi and I have developed a close relationship and friendship.

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