Gerald Estrin

Background

Gerald Estrin was born on September 9, 1921 in New York City.

Education

He met his future wife Thelma Austern in 1941 at City College, New York and they were married when he was 20 and she was 17. Estrin entered the Army during World War II, after which he and Thelma Estrin entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they both earned degrees in Electrical Engineering. Estrin received his B.S, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin in 1948, 1949, and 1951, respectively.

Career

Estrin served as research engineer in the von Neumann group at IAS from 1950 to 1956. This led to an invitation from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel to direct the WEIZAC Project. Estrin and his wife went to Israel for the WEIZAC Project in 1954, after which Estrin returned to a teaching position at UCLA in 1955.

In the late 1950s Estrin came up with the concept of reconfigurable computing, which allows the acceleration of computational processes by using variable configurations of specialised hardware modules in addition to a sequential processing unit. The idea was practically realised as "The Fixed Plus Variable Structure Computer".

Estrin obtained a teaching position at UCLA in 1953 and they moved to Los Angeles. During this time Thelma taught at Los Angeles Valley College, a junior college in Los Angeles. After their return from the WEIZAC project, Thelma also began working at UCLA in 1960 and she became a professor in the Computer Science Department in 1980. Gerald Estrin served as Chairperson of the UCLA Computer Science Department from 1979 to 1982 and from 1985 to 1988. He retired in 1991, and was recalled as Professor Emeritus.

Estrin was an IEEE Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a member of the Board of Governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.

Achievements

• Among his many academic accomplishments was developing the concept of reconfigurable computing, an idea that led to new types of programmable computer chips that are part of many of the systems and devices we use today. Many of the original Internet pioneers were his students or colleagues.

Works

• book

  • "Organization of computer systems: the fixed plus variable structure computer."

    1960

  • "Parallel processing in a restructurable computer system."

    1963

  • "SARA (system architects apprentice): modeling, analysis, and simulation support for design of concurrent systems."

    1986

Membership

Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (distinguished speaker 1980), Association Computing Machinery (national lecturer 1966-1967).

Connections

Gerald Estrin was married and had 3 children.

child:

Margo Estrin

child:

Judith Estrin

She is an American entrepreneur, business executive, and philanthropist. Estrin worked with Vinton Cerf on the Transmission Control Protocol project at Stanford University in the 1970s. Estrin is an entrepreneur who co-founded eight technology companies. She was the chief technology officer of Cisco Systems from 1998 to 2000. She is currently CEO of JLABS, LLC, a privately held company focused on furthering innovation in business, government, and nonprofit organizations.

child:

Deborah Estrin

She is a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech. She is co-founder of the non-profit Open mHealth and gave a TEDMED talk on small data in 2013. Estrin is known for her work on sensor networks, mobile health, and small data. She is one of the most-referenced computer scientists of all time, with her work cited over 128,000 times according to Google Scholar.

Wife:

Thelma Estrin

She was an American computer scientist and engineer who did pioneering work in the fields of expert systems and biomedical engineering. She was one of the first to apply computer technology to healthcare and medical research. She was professor emerita in the Department of Computer Science, University of California at Los Angeles.