George J. Klir | |
|---|---|
 Professor Klir onIEEE Conference "Intelligent Systems" '08, Varna, Bulgaria | |
| Born | (1932-04-22)April 22, 1932 |
| Died | May 27, 2016(2016-05-27) (aged 84) |
| Alma mater | Czech Technical University |
| Known for | Fuzzy logic,general systems theory, generalized information theory, interval computations |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science,systems science |
| Doctoral students | |
George Jiří Klir (April 22, 1932 – May 27, 2016) was a Czech-Americancomputer scientist and professor ofsystems sciences atBinghamton University inBinghamton, New York.
George Klir was born in 1932 inPrague, Czechoslovakia. In 1957 he received aM.S. degree inelectrical engineering at theCzech Technical University in Prague. In the early 1960s he taught at the Institute of Computer Research in Prague. In 1964 he received a doctorate incomputer science from theCzechoslovak Academy of Sciences.
In the 1960s Klir went toIraq to teach at theBaghdad University for two years. At the end he managed to immigrate to the U.S.[3] He started teaching computer science at UCLA and at theFairleigh Dickinson University. In 1969 he came toBinghamton University, where he later became professor ofsystems science. One year (1982–1983) he stayed as a fellow in DutchNetherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), where he completed the manuscript of his bookArchitecture of Systems Problem Solving. In 2007 he retired after 37 years at the university.
From 1974 to 2014 Klir was editor of theInternational Journal of General Systems, and from 1985 to 2016 of theInternational Book Series on Systems Science and Systems Engineering. From 1980 to 1984 George Klir was the first president of theInternational Federation for Systems Research (IFSR). In the years 1981–1982 he was also president ofSociety for General Systems Research, now International Society for the Systems Sciences. He was further president of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society from 1988 to 1991 and the International Fuzzy Systems Association (IFSA) from 1993 to 1995.
Klir received numerous awards and honors, including 5 honorary doctoral degrees, the Gold Medal of Bernard Bolzano, Lotfi A. Zadeh Best Paper Award, the Kaufmann's Gold Medal, SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research and IFSA Award for Outstanding Achievement.[4] In 2007 he was awarded the Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award of theIEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS).
Klir was known for path-breaking research over almost four decades. His earlier work was in the areas ofsystems modeling andsimulation, logic design,computer architecture, anddiscrete mathematics. Later research, from 1990s onward, included the areas ofintelligent systems, generalizedinformation theory,fuzzy set theory andfuzzy logic, theory of generalized measures, andsoft computing.
Klir was the author of 23 books, over 300 articles, and he also edited 10 books:
Books (selection):
