About TK


Thomas Kailath received the B.E. (Telecom) degree from the College of Engineering, Pune, in India, and S.M. (1959) and Sc.D. (1961) degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then worked at the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, CA, before being appointed to Stanford University as Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1963.



Professor Kailath was promoted to Professor in 1968, and was appointed the first holder of the Hitachi America Professorship in 1988. He assumed emeritus status in 2001, but remains active with his research and writing activities. Kailath's research and teaching at Stanford have ranged over several fields of engineering and mathematics: information theory, communications, linear systems, estimation and control, signal processing, semiconductor manufacturing, probability and statistics, and matrix and operator theory. He has also co-founded and served as a director of several high-technology companies.

Professor Kailath has mentored an outstanding array of over a hundred doctoral and postdoctoral scholars. Their joint efforts have led to over 300 journal papers, several of which have received outstanding paper prizes; they have also led to a dozen patents and to several books and monographs, including the major textbooks: Linear Systems (1980) and Linear Estimation (2000). Kailath received the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2007 for "exceptional contributions to the development of powerful algorithms for communications, control, computing and signal processing".

Among Professor Kailath's other major honors are the Shannon Award of the IEEE Information Theory Society; the IEEE Education Medal and the IEEE Signal Processing Medal; honorary degrees from universities in Sweden, Scotland, Spain, France, India and Israel; the Padma Bhushan, a high civilian award of the Government of India; the 2009 Spanish BBVA Foundation Prize for Information and Communication Technologies; membership of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences; and, among others, foreign membership of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Academy of Engineering and the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Professor Thomas Kailath's Curriculum Vitae

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