6 IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE FIRST QUARTER 2005

Awards

The first recipient of the IEEE GUSTAV ROBERT KIRCHHOFF AWARD:Professor Leon O. ChuaThis new technical field award of the IEEE is given “Foroutstanding contributions to the fundamentals of anyaspect of electronic circuits and systems that has a longterm significance or impact.” The first recipient, madepublic in December 2004, is Professor Leon O. Chua, “Forseminal contributions to the foundation of nonlinear cir-cuit theory, and for inventing Chua’s Circuit and CellularNeural Networks, each spawning a new research area.

“Chua’s Global Invisible College”

In 1996, for the occasion of the 60th Birthday of LeonChua, the following lines were written by Ildikó andÁrpád Csurgay: “. . . we are very muchobliged to him for his brilliant para-digms. . . We express our thanks tohim for establishing Chua’s GlobalInvisible College around his center ofexcellence in Berkeley, . . . ”

Indeed, many of us, all over theworld belong to his Invisible College. ACollege of excellence in Nonlinear Sci-ence and his Nonlinear ElectronicsLaboratory (NOEL) in Berkeley.

Brilliant Paradigms

Nonlinear circuit theory, Chua’s Cir-cuit, and the Cellular Neural/nonlinearNetwork (CNN) are three cornerstoneswe owe to Professor Chua.

As to nonlinear-circuit theory, he iswidely recognized as the foremostpioneer in this area. Many concepts presented in his949-page book on “Introduction to Nonlinear NetworkTheory” have found important applications, includingthe design of cellular neural networks where the nonlin-ear driving-point plot technique developed in this bookis indispensable. His axiomatic definition of nonlinearcircuit elements represents a paradigm shift in circuittheory, which led to a unified theory of linear and non-linear circuits based only on Kirchhoff laws and elementlaws. Chua’s axiomatic approach has clarified andresolved several paradoxes of a foundational nature.

Among many fundamental circuit theoretic resultsbased on controlled sources discovered by Chua, hehad proved the fundamental theorem that every nonlin-ear device can be modeled using only linear resistors,capacitors, controlled sources, and 2-terminal nonlinearresistors. This is one of the few truly deep and founda-tional results of circuit theory. Another fundamentalcontribution is the qualitative theory of dynamic cir-cuits presented in 3 seminal papers which have becomestandard references and foundations of numerous sub-sequent publications in nonlinear dynamics.

Among other fundamental results, it shows that thereare fundamental limits of performance among differentclasses of nonlinear circuits. In particular, Chua provedthat no information processing circuits such as flip-

flops, oscillators, memories, etc. canbe built from locally-passive nonlin-ear elements. His theory of local activ-ity has become the foundation fordesigning complex dynamic circuits,including neural networks. Moreover,Chua’s theory of local activity hasprovided the fundamental analyticaltool for studying complexity theory,currently a very active multidiscipli-nary area cutting across physics,chemistry, biology, economics, etc. Inall of these cases, Chua’s nonlinearcircuit synthesis technique is used tomap the complexity problem into anequivalent nonlinear circuit modelwhere many deep analytical resultsdeveloped by Chua can be applied.

Dr. Chua is responsible for intro-ducing chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics to Elec-trical Engineering by inventing Chua’s circuit andproving it to have strange attractors. Along with theLorenz equation, Chua’s circuit is the example ofchoice in numerous publications on chaos wheremore than 800 publications have cited Chua’s circuitas of 2003. Chua’s circuit is also the prototype cir-cuit used by most researchers designing secure com-munication systems based on chaos.

Another contribution of Professor Chua which hasmade major impacts is his invention the Cellular Neural

7FIRST QUARTER 2005 IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

Network (CNN). Based on this, as the core “instruc-tion,” with T. Roska, they invented the CNN UniversalMachine architecture. Among all neural network archi-tectures published to date, CNN universal machine isthe only one that has been successfully implementedinto a practical fully-programmable chip capable ofsolving ultra high-speed pattern recognition and imageprocessing problems. In addition, the CNN UniversalMachine is a stored programmable cellular wave com-puter architecture, a universal machine on flows(developed later). For many mission critical applica-tions, the CNN universal chip has outperformed con-ventional supercomputers, and has become theenabling technology of choice. As a further testimonyof the impact of the CNN universal machine based chip(namely, the ACE 16 k visual microprocessor chipdeveloped in Seville) as an enabling technology, a com-mercially available 3-D camera computer called the Bi-ihas been developed. The Bi-i was awarded the “FirstPrize and the Product of the Year” title at the mostprestigious machine vision fair in Europe, the Vision2003, in Stuttgart, Germany. In addition, the potentialsof the CNN universal chip as an ultra-high speed visioncomputer has attracted many active research groupsworldwide, who interacted actively through specialsessions at ISCAS and ECCTD, special issues in jour-nals, and at the bi-annual international workshopdevoted exclusively to CNN applications (CNNA).

Lecturing and Mentoring

Leon Chua has given many keynote lectures at ISCAS,ECCTD, CNNA, NOLTA, etc. His works and lectures haveinspired and stimulated a new generation of enthusias-tic young researchers on nonlinear dynamics and infor-mation theory.

Dr. Chua has received the prestigious IEEE Neural Net-works Pioneer Award from the Computational IntelligenceSociety in 2000 in recognition of his impact in neural net-works. He has received 7 patents and 9 honorary doctor-ates. He is a recipient of the top 15 cited authors inEngineering award in 2002, chosen from the Current Con-tents (ISI) database of all cited papers in engineering disci-plines in the citation index over a 10 year period from 1991to October 2001. He was elected a foreign member of theEuropean Academy of Sciences in 1997.

For the record, let me also list some IEEE and profes-sional activities, as well as major honors and awards ofDr. Chua:

■ Editor, IEEE Transactions of Circuits and System,1975–1977.

■ President, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society,1977–1978.

■ Chairman, IEEE CAS Fellow Committee, 1992–2000.

■ Editor, International Journal of Bifurcation andChaos, 1990-present.

■ Editor, Book Series on Nonlinear Science, WorldScientific Publishing Company, 1990.

■ IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Award, 2000.■ IEEE Third Millenium Medal, 2000.■ IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Golden Jubilee

Medal, 2000. ■ IEEE Circuits and Systems Society MAC Van

Valkenburg Award, 1995 and 1998.■ IEEE CAS Technical Achievement Award, 1993.■ IEEE Fellow, 1974.■ IEEE W. R. G. Baker Prize, 1973.■ IEEE Browder J. Thompson Prize, 1973. ■ IEEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award, 1974.■ Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award,

1982.All in all, I do think, the first awardee of the IEEE

Kirchhoff Award is a Scientist-Engineer for all seasons.Tamás Roska

Fellow of the IEEEResearch Professor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

(MTA SZTAKI) and Professor and Dean, Faculty of Informa-tion Technology, Pazmany University, Budapest.

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