Zadeh Lotfi

CalBerkeley computer scientist Zadeh Lotfi invented FuzzyLogic in 1965.

For some decades he was referred to in the literature as "Lotfi Zadeh", but apparently there was a confusion about SurnameGoesLast? in America and he now prefers Zadeh Lotfi.

This is not, as far as I know, true, and I have known quite a few Iranians all of whom have family name after personal name.

• Which has nothing to do with the puzzle of why Lotfi in particular changed his own name, and I'm testifying above from personal knowledge of him, of how he used to be addressed at U.C. Berkeley, and of the literature, that this did in fact happen, so it isn't relevant that you know quite a few Iranians who did not have some confusion about order of first versus last names. None of the other (many) Iranians I've worked with mentioned any confusion, either; I never thought to ask them about Lotfi to see if they could shed light on it, but in any case, their situations apparently were for some unknown reason different than his.

Both orderings are now found in google searches and in the literature.

Mainly because Google returns lots of hits for Zadeh, Lotfi.

Isn't Zadeh his surname?

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~zadeh/

Often mis-spelled "Lofti".

I have been guilty of this misspelling myself, and attended a conference at which his name tag was misspelt in this way.

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