John Ralph Ragazzini was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 electrical engineer and a professor of 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...

. Ragazzini was born in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and received the degrees of B.S. and E.E. at the City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

 in 1932 and 1933 and earned the degrees of A.M. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in 1939 and 1941.

Ragazzini was a former dean of the School of Engineering and Science at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 and during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he was chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, where he was involved in the Manhattan Project

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...

.

Ragazzini's notable students are Rudolf Kalman

Rudolf Kalman

Rudolf Emil Kálmán is a Hungarian-American electrical engineer, mathematical system theorist, and college professor, who was educated in the United States, and has done most of his work there. He is currently a retired professor from three different institutes of technology and universities...

 (see Kalman filter

Kalman filter

In statistics, the Kalman filter is a mathematical method named after Rudolf E. Kálmán. Its purpose is to use measurements observed over time, containing noise and other inaccuracies, and produce values that tend to be closer to the true values of the measurements and their associated calculated...

s), Eliahu Ibraham Jury

Eliahu Ibraham Jury

Eliahu Ibraham Jury is an American engineer, born in Baghdad, Iraq. He received his Doctor of Engineering Science degree from Columbia University of New York in 1953...

 (see Z-transform

Z-transform

In mathematics and signal processing, the Z-transform converts a discrete time-domain signal, which is a sequence of real or complex numbers, into a complex frequency-domain representation....

) and Lotfi Asker Zadeh

Lotfi Asker Zadeh

Lotfali 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...

 (see Fuzzy sets 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...

).

Ragazzini is also credited, along with Lotfi Zadeh, in 1952, to have pioneered the development of the z-transform

Z-transform

In mathematics and signal processing, the Z-transform converts a discrete time-domain signal, which is a sequence of real or complex numbers, into a complex frequency-domain representation....

 method in discrete-time signal processing

Signal processing

Signal processing is an area of systems engineering, electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time...

 and analysis.
In 1979, American Automatic Control Council

American Automatic Control Council

The American Automatic Control Council is an organization founded in 1956 for research in control theory. It is an association of the control systems divisions of eight member societies and a member of the International Federation of Automatic Control....

 named John R. Ragazzini Award after Ragazzini and he was the first recipient of the award.

External links

• John R. Ragazzini's Obituary in New York Times
• John R. Ragazzini's on the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  Mathematics Genealogy Project
  The Mathematics Genealogy Project is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians. As of September, 2010, it contained information on approximately 145,000 mathematical scientists who contribute to "research-level mathematics"...
  
  's page.