One of these days, I happened to search for “fuzzy logic” on wikipedia and I was amazed to find out that they cite another researcher, R.H. Wilkinson, in stead of the well known Lotfi Zadeh, as the author of the first paper on fuzzy logic. Wikipedia says:
The first paper on Fuzzy Logic (defined as a multivalued logic based upon set theory) was published by R.H. Wilkinson in 1963 following his first proposals in his 1961 Electrical Engineering master thesis. He was the first one to redefine the earlier multivalued logics in terms of set theory.
I could not believe my eyes. This blew my mind.I got introduced to the exciting field of fuzzy logic way back in 2001 while working as Staff Associate in Electronics and Computer Engineering at the Polytechnic, a constituent college of Malawi. Since that time, I have read a lot about Fuzzy Logic. All this time, I have known Lotfi Zadeh as the author of the first paper on Fuzzy Logic.i.e. Zadeh, L.A. (1965). “Fuzzy sets”, Information and Control 8 (3): 338-353. After this seminal paper, he went to publish lots of papers in the field and he is known worldwide as the Father of Fuzzy Logic. Two years ago, I listened to him speaking on A New Frontier in Computation – Computation with Information Described in Natural Language at the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2006) in Vancouver. I really enjoyed his plenary talk. But this revelation by wikipedia has really surprised me. Wikipedia further points that
In 1965 Lotfi Zadeh (then an Electrical Engineering systems professor) axiomatized the logic of Wilkinson without the electrical circuits and without giving Wilkinson any credit.
Several questions have to be asked. Is Zadeh still the Father of Fuzzy Logic? Why did the big man forget to refer to Wilkinson’s paper in his 1965 paper? But did he really know anything about Wilkinson’s work? Remember that there was no Internet at that time. I am sure it was not that easy for one to know the existence of other researchers’ publications, especially the most recent ones. Google was no there! On the other hand, if R.H.Wilkinson was such a brilliant researcher, why is it that we do not see his research works after that great paper? If we look at the status of these two scientists at that time, we see that Zadeh was already advanced in terms of his career having obtained his PhD in 1959 while Wilkinson only obtained his Masters degree in 1961. Wilkinson, being younger, we should have been seeing more work from him on this subject. Maybe, I am speaking too much because I am pro-Zadeh. Can those of you in the know please help me and other readers with more information on this issue.
No related posts.
10 users commented in " Who is the Father of Fuzzy Logic? Lotfi Zadeh or R.H. Wilkinson? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThat’s one of the things that drives me nuts about wikipedia.. half the knowledge on their is false.
[Reply]
Well I hope you set that record straight. I think the good thing about Wikipedia is that it allows individuals like us to set the record straight. That aside, it is possible that Wilkinson wrote the first paper on Fuzzy logic, but as you have pointed out it is Zadeh who built up the area. Even today many brilliant papers get written, but they never lead to anything great because the author leaves it prematurely and moves on to do other stuff.
lvss last blog post..Today’s Athletes Stronger and Faster?
[Reply]
When wikipedia was small everything was… close to be right. as at gone bigger and bigger, more people write false and data that isn’t correct. but I think when wikipedia will get even bigger – the data will be good again =)
My SEO Experiments last blog post..My SEO Experiment
[Reply]
Lotfi Zadeh is, no doubt, the father of fuzzy logic. Forget about wiki.
[Reply]
I can’t really say as I have never heard of R.H. Wilkinson. I have always known Zadeh to be the main behind the birth of Fuzzy Logic.
[Reply]
I also considered Zadeh the main person of Fuzzy Logic appearance, but maybe it is possible to check Wilkinson’s involvment somewhere esle, not only in wiki?
[Reply]
This site claims that Wilkinson and Zadeh independently discovered fuzzy logic:
http://neurocomputing.org/AnalogLogic.aspx
[Reply]
Clement Nyirenda says:
January 6th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
@Garg: This is interesting. But I am still very surprised because Wilkinson is not mentioned at all in the Fuzzy research world.
[Reply]
Oh, no, “invention” of fuzzy logic has been around much before Wilkinson and then Zadeh decided to advertise it systematically. Work of Michel (Mihailo) Petrovic related to the so called “interval mathematics” preceded, and substantially so, “fuzzy logic” in his works ranging from 1896 with culmination in 1932 of his “Interval Mathematics” (about 200 pages is devoted to this subject in his voluminous Collected works). His work is in French and in Serbian and this may be partly the reason it is not well-known in the English-speaking world.
[Reply]
Clement Nyirenda says:
July 1st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
@Radoslav: Thanks for the information. Are you a fuzzy practitioner? You seem to have a lot of knowledge in this area.
[Reply]
I would really appreciate if you could use your name when commenting.Using just keywords makes your comment seem spammy, and it's liable to get deleted.Please read my comment policy for more details.Many thanks for your cooperation!
Got an opinion? Leave a civil reply.