Gerald Estrin

Gerald Estrin (September 9, 1921 - March 29, 2012) was an American computer scientist and professor in the UCLA Computer Science Department from 1956 to 1991, serving as department chair from 1979 to 1982 and again from 1985 to 1988. He directed the WEIZAC project at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science from 1954 to 1955, introduced the concept of reconfigurable computing in the late 1950s to enable computational acceleration through variable hardware configurations, and later developed the SARA system architects' apprentice tool. His doctoral students included Vint Cerf, David Patterson and Jean-Loup Baer, and he was an IEEE Life Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow. Estrin received the IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award in 1995 for significant developments on early computers.