Professor Honors Professor

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Fredric M. Ham, Ph.D., Harris Professor, Florida Tech Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, presents a plaque to Lotfi Zadeh, Ph.D., at his induction into the International Neural Network Society (INNS) College of Fellows. Ham is INNS president. Zadeh, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, is known as the father of Fuzzy Set Theory and Fuzzy Logic.

A fuzzy set is a set in which the elements have varying degrees of membership. In fuzzy set theory, membership of elements in the set is permitted by gradual assessment of the elements by use of what is called a membership function that is valued in the real interval from zero to unity. Thus fuzzy sets are generalizations of classical sets. In multi-valued logic, reasoning is precise, whereas in fuzzy logic, which is derived from fuzzy set theory, reasoning is approximate.