George Klir
Encyclopedia
George Jiri Klir is a Czech-American computer scientist
and professor of systems sciences at the Center for Intelligent Systems at Binghamton University
in Binghamton, New York
.
, Czechoslovakia. In 1957 he received a M.S.
degree in Electrical engineering
at the Czech Technical University in Prague
. In the early 1960s he taught at the Institute of Computer Research in Prague. In 1964 he received a doctorate in Computer science
from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
.
In the 1960s Klir went to Iraq
to teach at the Baghdad University for two years. At the end he managed to immigrate to the U.S. He started teaching computer science at UCLA and at the Fairleigh Dickinson University
. In 1969 he came to Binghamton University
, where he later became professor of Systems science
. One year (1982–1983) he stayed as a fellow in Dutch Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), where he completed the manuscript of his book Architecture of Systems Problem Solving. In 2007 he retired after 37 years at the University. One of his doctoral students was Richard Sternberg
.
Since 1974 Klir is editor of the International Journal of General Systems
, and the International Book Series on Systems Science and Systems Engineering since 1985. From 1980 to 1984 George Klir was the first president of the International Federation for Systems Research
(IFSR). In the years 1981–1982 he was also president of Society 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. In 2007 he has been awarded the Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS).
and simulation
, logic design, computer architecture
, and discrete mathematics
. More current research since the 1990s include the areas of intelligent systems
, generalized information theory
, fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic
, theory of generalized measures, and soft computing
.
Books:
Articles (a selection)
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
and professor of systems sciences at the Center for Intelligent Systems at Binghamton University
Binghamton University
Binghamton University, also formally called State University of New York at Binghamton, , is a public research university in the State of New York. The University is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system...
in Binghamton, New York
Binghamton, New York
Binghamton is a city in the Southern Tier of New York in the United States. It is near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers...
.
Biography
George Klir was born in 1932 in PraguePrague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, Czechoslovakia. In 1957 he received a M.S.
Master of Science
A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...
degree in Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
at the Czech Technical University in Prague
Czech Technical University in Prague
Czech Technical University in Prague is one of the largest universities in the Czech Republic, and the oldest institute of technology in Central Europe....
. In the early 1960s he taught at the Institute of Computer Research in Prague. In 1964 he received a doctorate in Computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
The Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was established in 1953 to be the scientific center for Czechoslovakia. It was succeeded by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in 1992.-History:...
.
In the 1960s Klir went to Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
to teach at the Baghdad University for two years. At the end he managed to immigrate to the U.S. He started teaching computer science at UCLA and at the Fairleigh Dickinson University
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Fairleigh Dickinson University is a private university founded as a junior college in 1942. It now has several campuses located in New Jersey, Canada, and the United Kingdom.-Description:...
. In 1969 he came to Binghamton University
Binghamton University
Binghamton University, also formally called State University of New York at Binghamton, , is a public research university in the State of New York. The University is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system...
, where he later became professor of Systems science
Systems science
Systems science is an interdisciplinary field of science that studies the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science. It aims to develop interdisciplinary foundations, which are applicable in a variety of areas, such as engineering, biology, medicine and social sciences.Systems...
. One year (1982–1983) he stayed as a fellow in Dutch Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study
The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, is an independent research institute in the field of the humanities and social and behavioural sciences founded in 1970...
in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), where he completed the manuscript of his book Architecture of Systems Problem Solving. In 2007 he retired after 37 years at the University. One of his doctoral students was Richard Sternberg
Richard Sternberg
Richard M. Sternberg is an American scientist. Sternberg believes intelligent design should be part of the discussion about evolution and the origin of life on Earth. Although he is not a proponent of intelligent design, Dr. Sternberg has been critical of the mainstream in evolutionary biology for...
.
Since 1974 Klir is editor of the International Journal of General Systems
International Journal of General Systems
The International Journal of General Systems is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on basic and applied aspects of systems science and systems methodology. Its focus is on "general systems" - systems ideas that have general applicability...
, and the International Book Series on Systems Science and Systems Engineering since 1985. From 1980 to 1984 George Klir was the first president of the International Federation for Systems Research
International Federation for Systems Research
The International Federation for Systems Research is an international federation for global and local societies in the field of systems science...
(IFSR). In the years 1981–1982 he was also president of Society for General Systems Research
Society for General Systems Research
The Society for General Systems Research is predecessor of the current International Society for the Systems Sciences , known to be one the first interdisciplinary and international co-operations in the field of systems theory and systems science...
, 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. In 2007 he has been awarded the Fuzzy Systems Pioneer Award of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS).
Work
George Klir is known for path-breaking research over almost four decades. His earlier work was in the areas of systems modelingSystems modeling
Systems modeling or systems modelling is the interdisciplinary study of the use of models to conceptualize and construct systems in business and IT development....
and simulation
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
, logic design, computer architecture
Computer architecture
In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modelling of those systems....
, and discrete mathematics
Discrete mathematics
Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that are fundamentally discrete rather than continuous. In contrast to real numbers that have the property of varying "smoothly", the objects studied in discrete mathematics – such as integers, graphs, and statements in logic – do not...
. More current research since the 1990s include the areas of intelligent systems
Intelligent Systems
is a Japanese first-party video game developer and internal team of Nintendo Co., Ltd. It has its headquarters in the Nintendo Kyoto Research Center in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture....
, generalized information theory
Information theory
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
, fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic
Fuzzy logic
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic; it deals with reasoning that is approximate rather than fixed and exact. In contrast with traditional logic theory, where binary sets have two-valued logic: true or false, fuzzy logic variables may have a truth value that ranges in degree between 0 and 1...
, theory of generalized measures, and soft computing
Soft computing
Soft computing is a term applied to a field within computer science which is characterized by the use of inexact solutions to computationally-hard tasks such as the solution of NP-complete problems, for which an exact solution cannot be derived in polynomial time.-Introduction:Soft Computing became...
.
See also
- Fuzzy measure theoryFuzzy measure theoryFuzzy measure theory considers a number of special classes of measures, each of which is characterized by a special property. Some of the measures used in this theory are plausibility and belief measures, fuzzy set membership function and the classical probability measures...
- Fuzzy logicFuzzy logicFuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic; it deals with reasoning that is approximate rather than fixed and exact. In contrast with traditional logic theory, where binary sets have two-valued logic: true or false, fuzzy logic variables may have a truth value that ranges in degree between 0 and 1...
- Fuzzy subalgebraFuzzy subalgebraFuzzy subalgebras theory is a chapter of fuzzy set theory. It is obtained from an interpretation in a multi-valued logic of axioms usually expressing the notion of subalgebra of a given algebraic structure. Indeed, consider a first order language for algebraic structures with a monadic predicate...
- Genetic Fuzzy SystemsGenetic Fuzzy SystemsGenetic fuzzy systems are fuzzy systems using a genetic algorithm for determining the system parameters.-Fuzzy systems:Fuzzy systems are fundamental methodologies to represent and process linguistic information, with mechanisms to deal with uncertainty and imprecision...
- International Federation for Systems ResearchInternational Federation for Systems ResearchThe International Federation for Systems Research is an international federation for global and local societies in the field of systems science...
Publications
Klir is the author of some 16 books, over three hundred articles, and he also edited 10 books:Books:
- 1967, Cybernetic Modelling, Iliffe, London.
- 1969, An Approach to General Systems Theory, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.
- 1972, Trends in General Systems Theory, (ed.) 462 pp.
- 1979, Methodology in Systems Modelling and Simulation, with B. P. Zeigler, M. S. Elzas, and T. I. Oren (ed.), North-Holland, Amsterdam.
- 1978, Applied General Systems Research, (ed.), Plenum Press, New York.
- 1985, Architecture of Systems Problem Solving, with D. Elias, Plenum Press, New York, 354 pp.
- 1988, Fuzzy Sets, Uncertainty and Information, with T. Folger, Prentice Hall.
- 1991, Facets of Systems Science, Plenum Press, New York, 748 pp.
- 1992, Fuzzy Measure Theory, with Zhenyuan Wang, Plenum Press, New York, 1991.
- 1995, Fuzzy Sets and Fuzzy Logic: Theory and Applications, with Bo Yuan, Prentice Hall, 592 pp.
- 1996, Fuzzy Sets, Fuzzy Logic, and Fuzzy Systems, with Lotfi Asker ZadehLotfi Asker ZadehLotfali Askar Zadeh , better known as Lotfi A. Zadeh, is a mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, artifical intelligence researcher and professor emeritus of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley...
(author) & Bo Yuan (ed.), Selected Papers, 840 pp. - 1997, Fuzzy Set Theory: Foundations and Applications, with U. St. Clair and B. Yuan, Prentice Hall, 257 pp.
- 1998, Uncertainty-Based Information: Elements of Generalized Information Theory, with M. Wierman, Springer Verlag, Heidelberg.
- 2000, Fuzzy Sets: An Overview of Fundamentals and Personal Views, Beijing Normal University Press, Beijing.
- 2005, Uncertainty and Information: Foundations of Generalized Information Theory, John Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 499 pp.
Articles (a selection)
- 1991, Generalized information theory, Fuzzy Sets and Systems, Vol 40 nr. 1, pp. 127–142.
External links
- George Klir bibliography, Thomas J. Watson School
- International Journal of General Systems, The journal where George Klir is editor since the beginning in 1974.