VOLUME 9, ISSUE 5, OCTOBER 2015

IN MEMORIAM — Prof. Ernest Kuh

Anthony Kuh


My dad passed away at the end of June after a short illness. He touched the lives of many at UC Berkeley, the IEEE Circuits and Systems community, and people in many walks of life. This memorial article starts off with an introduction by my dad’s longtime friend and colleague, Eugene Wong and is followed by comments by his students and colleagues about their interactions and relationships with my dad. Our family is appreciative and thankful to all the contributors for their heartfelt comments.


Eugene Wong: In a career that spanned nearly six decades, Professor Ernest Kuh was a preeminent leader of engineering education in our time. He brought to this role some extraordinary personal qualities: a nobility of purpose, a selfless devotion to duty and community good, flawless execution, and an ability to inspire people of all ages and all walks of life.

Ernie was a prominent member of a small group of faculty members at Berkeley (Don Pederson, John Whinnery, and Lotfi Zadeh among them) who forged the principles and values that developed into a culture which stood out among peer departments in Electrical Engineering. It is a culture that strives to achieve the highest standards of excellence but in an environment of collegial encouragement and support. In an atmosphere that was at once nurturing, challenging and inspiring, many of us thrived and the Department flourished. This is one of Ernie’s finest legacies.

Ernie was successively Department Chair and College Dean at a relatively early age. After a highly successful administrative tenure, he returned to academic life and had a flourishing teaching and research career for another three decades. Ernie was at his best as a teacher and mentor. Through his influential articles and books, he touched the lives and careers of countless students across the world. But his impact was greatest on those who were fortunate to work closely with him. Some of these distinguished members of our community have contributed to this memorial article. Their warm memories stand in eloquent testimony of a mentor and friend whose guidance and support did much to enrich their lives.


Shankar Sastry: I first met Ernie when he was the Dean of Engineering (the position that I now hold) when I was a graduate student. He was a close friend of my research advisor Charles Desoer and they were both giants in research and teaching in the Circuits and Systems Society. They had already written their seminal textbook, Basic Circuit Theory. A key feature of their pedagogy that impressed me immediately was how they never shied away from nonlinear circuits and systems, at a time when most textbooks of the genre were predominantly linear. Ernie in particular impressed me because on the other hand he was extremely rigorous in this thinking and analytical work and on the other hand really forward looking in terms of new applications. Ernie had already begun to start thinking about fundamental issues in IC layout and ICCAD more generally in the late 70s. After Ernie stepped down from the Deanship and returned to the faculty he was a great mentor to me. After I returned to the Berkeley faculty in the early 80s, I remember fondly how he would lead a group of faculty to the annual ISCAS meetings, not to mention the long dinners at his and Bettine’s home with conversations on opera, science and international partnerships!

Over the years, Ernie became an extremely important mentor and advisor to me. I seldom took on new roles or began new projects without at least a word of advice from Ernie. I kept learning about the breadth of his activities and his many international partnerships as time went on. One such event I remember very well was in 2006, when we had a Berkeley event at the newly constructed campus of a Taiwanese company, Media-Tek outside Taipei: the reception that he received at the auditorium when he gave his speech, was nothing short of the acclaim that is afforded to a rock-star!

In his term as Dean, Ernie had instilled in the College of Engineering, an ethos of being outward looking, rather than inwardly focused on campus politics. He advised me to keep this perspective. I believe that with the tremendous importance that technology is playing in shaping our society it is critical, this is Ernie’s lasting legacy and gift to the College of Engineering.


Ron Rohrer: The world of EECS knew Ernest Kuh as a gifted researcher, teacher and administrator. Those lucky to be his graduate students knew Ernie better; someone who provided great ideas to Berkeley and shared them generously; a nurturing colleague; he provided mentoring and momentum that launched so many successful careers.


Sanjit K. Mitra: I joined UC Berkeley as a graduate student in September 1958. My first contact with Professor Kuh was in the Fall 1959 semester when I took a graduate course on network synthesis from him. He was a very tough professor. The homework problems and examination questions he assigned sometimes took us a long time to solve. I recall in the first take-home midterm, one of the problems took me almost a week to solve. I found out later that it was a small research problem. He was always trying to make his students expand their horizons and go beyond their comfort zones.

In spring 1960 semester, I was offered research assistantship from several professors in the department including Professor Kuh. I decided to work under him. Based on the two graduate courses I took from him, I believed he would be the best supervisor for me and guide me to develop the skills to carry out high quality research.

Professor Kuh arranged for me to work during the summer months of 1960 at the Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was a fantastic experience. I met many giants in our field including Dr. Sidney Darlington and Dr. Harry Nyquist. I remain forever grateful for this opportunity.

After returning from Bell labs I started my thesis research. I was supported by a grant from NSF on active inductorless filters, but Professor Kuh told me that I could work on any problem that I liked; all I had to do was to meet him once a week and tell him what I had done. In the beginning it was very difficult, as I had no idea what to work on. Eventually I started my own research problems. Looking back, I realize that Professor Kuh was pushing me to become an independent researcher.

I remember him, as someone who did not say much, but when he did, it was very insightful and pithy. He had these very penetrating eyes – I used to feel that he could see “through me”. I think in not saying much, he forced me to think and have independent thoughts. This was a real gift. It was very clear that he had incredibly high standards. I found this frustrating when I was his Ph.D. student, but today I truly appreciate.

Over the years I prized his advice and wisdom. He was a highly recognized Professor around the world receiving countless awards and prizes. I feel very honored to have been his student.


Ibrahim Hajj: I was deeply saddened when I heard that Prof. Ernie Kuh had passed away. Ernie was my teacher and my mentor. I first met Ernie when I went to Berkeley in the late sixties to study for my PhD. Ernie took me under his wings. In the late sixties Berkeley was the stage for free speech and a hotbed of activism. In spite of all the distractions, we were serious about our studies and worked hard on our research projects. At that time Ernie’s research was in circuit theory, and Ron Rohrer was teaching the students in his class how to write a circuit simulator based on nodal formulation rather than using state equations. In our first research meeting, Ernie gave me a copy of Gary Hachtel’s PhD thesis that listed various transistor interconnection structures that resulted in multistable circuits. I was tasked to find the theory behind these structures. That led to the theory of circuits with multiple equilibrium points, and the development computational methods and a circuit simulator for finding these multiple solutions based on piecewise-linear approximation, and established my interest in computer-aided simulation and design. Although Ernie became the chair of the EECS department when I was his student, he took the time to have a one-to-one meeting every week to discuss research work progress.

Later when I was a professor at the University of Illinois, Ernie hosted me during a sabbatical leave at Berkeley. Ernie was always friendly, helpful, encouraging and appreciative. He and his gracious wife Bettine invited us often to their house for dinner and always made us feel at home.

For me Ernie was a great teacher, a mentor, and a friend who really cared about his students and other people. I always enjoyed visiting with him and his wife whenever I was in Berkeley. I will surely miss him, especially when I visit Berkeley and the Bay Area.


David Hodges: As a graduate student, I learned modern network theory and design from Prof. Kuh in 1960-61. He was the best classroom teacher I ever had.

Prof. Kuh recruited me from Bell Labs to join the faculty in 1970. Though we did not collaborate in research or teaching, always he was a helpful mentor and advisor. We became good personal friends.

After I was appointed Dean of Engineering in 1990, Prof. Kuh was an invaluable resource for me in working with the College, the campus administration, and our loyal alumni supporters.


Felix Wu: It was a chilly morning in Berkeley in 1971, a roomful of students, including me, waited anxiously for the instructor of EECS225 Nonlinear Network Theory. When Professor Ernest Kuh started lecturing, with a clear voice and an ever-present smile, the feeling of caring and warmth permeated the room. He made the subject matters interesting, lively and relevant. Prof. Kuh was an inspirational teacher.

After I joined the Berkeley faculty, Ernie, then the Dean of Engineering, suggested in 1976 that Mac Van Valkenburg and I co-organize a workshop on “Application of Circuit Theory to Power System Problems”. That was the genesis of the Technical Committee on Power Systems and Power Electronics in the IEEE Circuit and Systems Society. Traces of circuit theory could be spotted in power systems research ever since. Throughout my career at Berkeley, Ernie was an enlightening mentor and a dear friend.

Ernie encouraged me to take on the job as the Vice President of HKU in 1997. He came to visit me soon afterwards, giving me a wealth of practical advice, emphasizing the importance of setting goals of raising standards and pursuing excellence. Ernie was a wise advisor.

Gong Ke, President of Tianjin University, organized a workshop in 2008 on “Frontier Technologies of Integrated Circuits - Honoring Ernest Kuh’s 80th Birthday”. Twenty-some of Ernie’s former students, who have become movers and shakers in academia, industry, and business worldwide, paraded a wide range of new areas in which Ernie’s intellectual DNA was visible. Ernie was a visionary leader.

I last visited him in May 2015. When the conversation turned to structural reform under planning in China’s universities, his eyes lit up and voice rose, stressing our responsibility to help building a better China and a better world. Ernie was a caring intellectual. Ernie was a great man.


Ming-Jeh Chien: Prof. Kuh was my advising professor in graduate school in UC Berkeley. As the Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and the co-author of the must-read and best selling textbook “Basic Circuit Theory”, Dr. Kuh would still take me as one of his students in 1970. It was truly my greatest honor.

He had a busy schedule and spent time visiting funding agencies and companies securing funds to help his graduate students. In our eyes he was a big-time professor who could give us pressure merely by the serious looks on his straight face. He was very busy, but spent time to point out to his students about the most promising potential topics and directions. Nevertheless, it was the most important thing that he did for us.

In 1974, the USA economy came to a downturn. Most students stayed unemployed after graduation. In the worst time of job finding, Dr. Kuh gave me the greatest help by introducing me to Wayne State University in Michigan as an assistant professor. Two years later, I joined Bell Labs. That was the biggest turning point in my life. I successfully fit into American society working for more than four years and received some teaching and business experiences. Then I came back to Taiwan in 1979 to be a professor at National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), my alma mater. Based on these working experiences, I gained the confidence and started my own business.

In gratitude of Dr. Kuh’s favors, I helped to donate and establish the Ernest S. Kuh Endowed Chair Fund. I assisted the UC Berkeley Alumni Association in Taiwan to hold numerous events in public speeches for the visiting UC Berkeley scholars. We had also introduced UC Berkeley to influential people in business and universities in Taiwan. Dr. Kuh also aided academic institutions, including NCTU, in building cooperating relationships with UC Berkeley.

Professor Kuh would try his best to help his students and people who contributed to better higher education. He has been looked up to and remembered by all of us. He deserves all the admiration and prestige.


Tatsuo Ohtsuki: In 1970 when I was with NEC, I was fortunately endowed with the privilege to spend one year with Prof. Kuh’s research group in UC Berkeley. At about the same time, Prof. Fujisawa (Osaka University) also participated in the group. I would meet Profs. Kuh and Fujisawa frequently and discuss research in the areas of basic circuit theory and integrated circuit design. In particular, “piecewise linear resistive networks” was the subject of our common interest. An outcome of our discussions was a jointly co-authored paper by the three of us that was published in the IEEE Trans. on Circuit Theory in1972. In 1974 we received the Guillemin-Cauer Prize Award from IEEE CAS Society for this work.

Since my invaluable experience at UC Berkeley, I have met Prof. Kuh frequently to exchange ideas and continue our research discussions. The opportunities of our meetings are at international conferences, Japanese universities and industries he visited, and during my second stay at UC Berkeley in 1984. An output of our discussions at NEC and Osaka University was published in IEEE Trans. on Circuit and Systems in 1979. Another output was obtained when Ernie spent a few months at Waseda University. We published a co-authored survey paper; “Recent advances in VLS layout” in the IEEE Proceedings in 1990.

Discussions with Ernie have given me incentive to create new research topics and these are reflected in some of my papers. I was impressed with his strict views, when publishing papers, on “originality of contents” and “organization of logical development”. I am extremely grateful to the impact of Prof. Kuh on my research activities.

Professor Ernest S. Kuh has been my mentor.


Satoshi Goto: I stayed in UC Berkeley from August 1977 to December 1979 as a Visiting Scholar of EECS Department. Fortunately, Ernie Kuh was my host Professor and gave me a lot of valuable advice even though he was very busy as Dean of Engineering. At that time, Semi-conductor technologies and its applications had been growing very rapidly and widely, the so called silicon innovation, thereby making Design Automation required for the semi-conductor industry. I had been working at NEC Laboratories and started my research on Physical Design Automation, particularly Layout Design Automation system in 1970. He gave me a lot of technical suggestions and gave me advice on how to write a paper. More than that, he taught me how to make our life valuable and comfortable. “Study harder when you are young”, “Make more good friends” and “To be honest to everybody”, which I learned from him. He introduced me to a lot of important professionals in my field. He several times invited my wife and I to his home and had a friendly nice party with those persons with delicious food cooked by his wife, Bettine. I am so grateful to Ernie Kuh all my life and want to say “Thank you for everything you gave me and you will stay with me forever”.


Sung-Mo Steve Kang: Professor Ernest Kuh (Ernie) was my life-long teacher, mentor and esteemed scholar. My association began in 1972 when I entered UC Berkeley as a graduate student. Although my first meeting in his office was rather brief I was greatly impressed by his kindness and full attention to me, despite his demanding schedule as he was transitioning from being department chairman to engineering dean. At that time I became acquainted with one of his then students, Benjamin Ting, who was working on single-row routing problems. I believe this was the beginning of Ernie’s work on physical design CAD. I was fortunate to be an advisee of Professor Leon Chua who was in the Berkeley Circuits Group with Ernie Kuh and Charles Desoer who was my academic advisor.

After graduation from Berkeley in 1975, I used to see Ernie in late 1970s and early 1980s at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill when he visited the Center for Computer Aids directed by Dr. Herman Gummel. In 1977 soon after joining Bell Labs, Ernie’s former student Dr. Ming Chien, now president of FICG in Taiwan, and I worked together at the Network Planning Center of AT&T Bell Labs for a year. Later as a recruiter I regularly visited Berkeley and met many of Ernie’s students, to mention a few, CK Cheng, now professor at UC San Diego, and Wayne Dai, formerly professor at UC Santa Cruz and now chairman of Verisilicon in China. Both of them took internships in Dr. Herman Gummel’s center. At that time Ernie was pioneering the field of physical design CAD by applying network theory. After I moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a tenured faculty member in 1985, I have worked closely with his former student, Professor Ibrahim Hajj in the circuits and systems group and met Ernie frequently in ISCAS, ICCAD and DAC conferences. Especially memorable were his visit to Seoul for a VLSI workshop in 1985, ISCAS in Osaka where we visited Kyoto together, and almost annual co-attendance to ICCAD in San Jose over the years.

The CASS lecture tour to China with Ernie in December 2000 was very special. At that time, many professors at Tsinghua University came with CAL Bear badges, welcomed Ernie and showed deep appreciation of their visits to Ernie’s laboratory since the early 1980s. When my group at UIUC developed a new fast digital circuit simulator ILLIADS, Ernie insisted that I present a talk at Berkeley and on the day of my visit patiently waited for my arrival although much delayed due to heavy traffic in the area. At conferences such as ICCAD, Ernie gracefully listened to many talks and hardly skipped technical sessions of his interest, which impressed me immensely. I have learned so much from Ernie’s wisdom and advice especially after being a department head of ECE at UIUC, then an engineering dean at UC Santa Cruz, and a chancellor at UC Merced. Ernie very kindly attended the inauguration ceremony in November 2007 when I was officially installed as the second chancellor of UC Merced. In his honor my wife and I established a scholarship at UC Merced along with a scholarship in honor of my advisor Leon Chua. In 2008 Ernie was most supportive for holding the first Memristor and Memristive Symposium at the Berkeley Engineering Library soon after HP researchers unveiled their solid-state memristors. Ernie sat through all the talks with keen interest.

Over the years, Mia and I have enjoyed regular gatherings with Ernie and his wife Bettine, and Leon and his wife Diana in the Berkeley area. One of our favorite restaurants was China Village in Albany. It has been truly a great honor and privilege to share favorite dishes and precious wine brought by Leon. After I moved to Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in February 2013, meetings continued, but slowed down some. The last meal we shared was in May 2015, for which Ernie came out despite difficulty in walking due to worsening health. I did not expect that would be our last gathering.

Mia and I will cherish our good times together over many years. Professor Ernest Kuh has influenced so many people and the world through his dedication to education, research and exemplary leadership for higher education.


Malgorzata Marek-Sadowska: It is very rare that individuals are genuine visionaries who start a wave and keep inspiring their students, co-workers, and practicing engineers. The late Professor Kuh who many consider the father of modern EDA was one such rare individual.

Professor Kuh’s important contributions as a scholar are well-known. Here I will only talk of my personal interaction that started in 1978. In May of that year I visited Berkeley for a day. This was the first time I met Professor Kuh. Later, in summer of the same year, Professor Kuh and his wife Bettine visited Poland and I was one of their guides in Warsaw. I applied for a post doc position with Professor Kuh and came to work with him in fall of 1979. I went back to Poland in June 1980. Professor Kuh invited me again in 1982 and this time, due to Marshall law in Poland I decided to stay in the US. I worked in Kuh’s Lab till 1990 when I moved to UCSB as a Professor.

Meeting Professor Kuh was a pivotal point for me. He gave me a chance to work with top-notch researchers and to develop myself. In the late seventies and early eighties, there were very few scientists from Poland in the US and I had no support of the institutional reputation or collegial network. I was extremely fortunate to find a mentor of such a caliber as Professor Kuh.

He was an exceptionally important person in my life, in the lives of graduate students who studied with him and under his supervision, and in the lives of post- docs visiting from all over the world. His mentoring style was indirect - he never said that our ideas or solutions were wrong, but his deep questions made us think more and come up with better approaches. The same was with the problems we worked on. They would originate from industrial needs and be later abstracted into elegant mathematical problems.

The last time I saw Professor Kuh, he was in a rehabilitation facility and his disease had gotten the upper hand. It was sad to see his slow departure. When he saw me, he said a few kind words and chatted in his usual friendly and warm way about our mutual friends. Professor Kuh will be greatly missed by all those that had the honor of working alongside him. I am grateful to also have known him as a person.


Chi-Ping Hsu: I have known Professor Kuh for 36 years since my graduate school at University of California, Berkeley. Professor Kuh was my research advisor then and is my personal advisor ever since. My career is greatly influenced and helped by Professor Kuh with his vision to shape the landscape of the EDA industry.

In addition to Professor Kuh’s numerous research contributions, technology breakthroughs, and dedications for over half a century, his contributions went far beyond the technology front. He played a significant role in the forming of the EDA industry during early 1980s. Many of the initial EDA companies were formed by his students and fellow researchers. Professor Kuh also instigated the joint working relationship between the semiconductor industry and the research communities. This visionary establishment in the early phase of the EDA industry has helped expedite the formation and maturity of the EDA industry and in turn helped the following 35 years of continuous semiconductor advancements in all segments of the electronics industry. One can surely say the Moore’s law will not have happened without the success of the EDA industry. Professor Kuh played the pivotal role in this historic event.

Professor Kuh is a man with amazing integrity and courage to stand for the principles. Professor Kuh earned tremendous respect from every person across the industry. A man with wisdom, true integrity, and over half a century dedication to the advancements of the semiconductor industry is certainly worth the industry’s celebration of his unusual contributions.


Chung-Kuan Cheng: I am extremely fortunate that I was able to have Prof. Kuh as my Ph.D. adviser. His advising could be summed up with the following words: integrity, inspiration, and impact. He demanded the best of every student; no corner-cutting was permitted. On the other hand, he was quick to forgive mistakes and to encourage us to improve. He gave us freedom in choosing our research topics and provided us opportunities to go beyond our current limits. For example, in the summer of the third year in my Ph.D. program (1983), he arranged for me to develop our placement project at the Hughes Aircraft Company. It was a pivotal experience for me to see that my research results could be incorporated into an industrial system and produce designs that had not been feasible before. Additionally, Prof. Kuh was a pioneer, and he imparted his vision to his students. His mission within the research fields of circuit analysis and physical layout was to explore circuit theory and the fundamental understandings of our physical space, and to develop systems which could tackle the growing complexities according to Moore’s law. He could foresee the many challenging and intriguing issues emerging with the advance of technology. These subjects, as well as some classic open problems, were some of our favorite topics to discuss.

Prof. Kuh was much more than my Ph.D. adviser; he became a lifelong mentor. Even after my graduation, we continued our collaboration via the California MICRO program from 1991 to 2008. We would visit companies together and exchange trips between our two campuses, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, at least once per quarter. During one trip while Prof. Kuh was visiting our research group, there was a brush fire in San Diego. The fire was so severe that people near our area had to evacuate. My wife still remembers how, as the fire reports kept worsening, us two professors just sat there and continued enjoying our technical discussion.

Prof. Kuh maintained very high spirits throughout his life. Even in sickness, he was always happy to see visitors, and never stopped offering guidance with wise advice. His life exuded great love for his family and the people he touched. He was passionate about the many meaningful causes he and Mrs. Kuh generously contributed to, e.g. the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Engineering School, UC Berkeley. Indeed, we will miss a giant in the field and in society. His deeds, spirit, and love will be in our memories forever.


Tim Cheng: Prof. Kuh was a role model, a lifelong mentor, and a personal friend. His supervision during my PhD study and the mentorship afterwards had very profound influence on me, my choice of pursuing an academic career, my research and teaching, and in turn my students. I still remember vividly our weekly meetings in my years at Berkeley. His comments and feedback to me were always to the point, concise, and stimulating. Clearly expressing his assessment of our progress without ambiguity was his style of supervision. He never micro-managed, but at the same time he was very effective in inspiring, stimulating, and influencing the progress and directions of our projects.

Back in the mid 80’s, as my thesis topic (VLSI testing) was new to the group, and to him too, he made special arrangement for me to work at Bell Labs for two summers and one winter to enrich my industrial exposure. In addition, he established a special seminar series in VLSI testing and I was often invited to attend meetings with a number of distinguished academic and industrial speakers hosted by him. This gave me unique opportunities to listen to his insightful conversations and observe his interactions with the visitors. Such experience, in the very early stage of my research career, definitely shaped me and inspired me to pursue a research career.

In the 2000’s, Jason Cong and I organized a sequence of workshops with the researchers from the US, China, and Taiwan, which were part of the activities for a joint center funded by the National Science Foundations of these three regions. A strong supporter of the center, Prof. Kuh attended several of them and gave invited talks. Through these activities, we traveled and visited various cities together and became closer friends. I then saw him as a noble, wise, and generous person, in addition to being a legend with exceptional achievements.

Prof. Kuh had touched my life and he will stay in my heart forever.


Wayne Dai: From advising my Ph.D. studies to serving as a board member of my start-up company, Professor Ernest Kuh has been my lifelong mentor and role model. His great vision of the “big picture,” his brilliant mind driven by passion and persistence, and his deeply caring spirit that never faltered in generosity will be remembered fondly by all of us.

One example of the success by focusing on the “big picture” was the creation of the term “System in Package” (SiP) when I was a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz. I started work on Multi-Chip Module (MCM) while I was doing my Ph. D. study under Professor Kuh. Shortly after I obtained my Ph. D. degree, as the founding Chairman, I started the IEEE Multi-Chip Module Conference, sponsored by four IEEE societies, held at Santa Cruz, California, from 1992 to 1997. At ASP-DAC in 2000, in the two companion papers with Dr. King Tai, a former AT&T fellow, we proposed the term System in Package (SiP), as the generalization of System on Chip (SoC). The term SiP was not popular 15 years ago but now is widely used by the industry, mainly due to need of miniaturization for hand held devices, such as smart phones and wearable devices, and the need for logic and DRAM integration and digital and RF integration, which sometimes could not be cost and performance effectively integrated in a SoC.

Another example of focusing on the “big picture” was making the first move on Fully Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FD-SOI) three years ago as the CEO of VeriSilicon - a Silicon Platform as a Service (SiPaaS) company. At low supply voltage for IoT applications, 2D fully depleted transistors of FD-SOI technology bring similar performance advantage and energy efficiency as the 3D fully depleted transistors of FinFet, with much lower cost. FD-SOI also brings the robustness to particles for automotive applications.


Qingjian Yu: I first met Prof. Ernest Kuh at ISCAS’84, when I was a visiting scholar at Columbia University. I knew that he, Prof. Desoer, and Prof. Chua had written the text, “Linear and Nonlinear Circuits”. As a circuit theory teacher, I was interested in the book. He gave me a copy of the book and asked me to give my comment on it. I read the book several times and learned a lot from it, but I didn’t take his requirement seriously and just thought it might be a usual modest expression. Next year, when we met again at ISCAS’85, he asked me why I didn’t give him my comments. I felt very sorry and told him that I had only found a few typing mistakes and I sent him a list of corrections later. When the book was formally published, I found that my name was in the acknowledgement list. His serious attitude made a strong impression on me.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the interconnects among circuits in VLSI systems had started to make a major impact on circuit performance and the model order reduction for interconnects had become a hot research topic. Most research work at that time was based on the lumped model of interconnects, but Prof. Kuh had his insights on the future and thought the model order reduction of interconnects based on the distributed model would become important in the near future. So he asked me to look at research in this direction. Some papers were found in this respect, and the normal ways to do it was either to use lumped models for distributed RLCG lines, or to use some approximation methods for derivatives to treat the telegraphers’ equations. He found the disadvantages in those methods and asked me to look for better algorithms. Finally, we decided on a different approach: to use some integration methods to treat the telegraphers’ equations. This work was very fruitful leading to many publications, further collaborations and more visits to Berkeley.

During my work with him, his wealth of knowledge gave me inspiration to look for new research topics and directions, his rigor taught me not only to take care of the important points, but to also carefully take care of details, and his open style in discussing academic problems made the discussions very friendly and effective. In my career, it was he who gave me great opportunities to do research work and was a big help in the work. He was so kind to me that he is not only my great teacher but also my good friend. I am always grateful to him.

Though Prof. Kuh has passed away, his contributions to UC Berkeley, to the U.S., to China, to education, and to academia will always be remembered.

We will always miss him.


Bob Brayton: I was not a student of Ernie’s but he was a kind of late-life mentor to me. When I came to Berkeley in 1987 I had already completed a 26-year career with IBM and retired. Switching to a new type of career was not as easy as I thought. Ernie was very supportive, was very welcoming and making me feel at home in Berkeley, and often showed me the ropes on how to get things done. He was always interested in what was going on in my academic and personal life. Much of the University life was new to me so it really helped to have a former dean giving advice. He was one of those rare individuals who was good at research as well as administration. In fact he was one of the few people I knew who continued doing leading research while serving as dean and then continuing the research unabated when his service as dean was over. Life was not all work though, and I did manage to have a number of great battles with Ernie on the tennis courts across from Cory or at his club at the Claremont. He and Bettine became our good friends and he will be sorely missed.


Peter Y K Cheung: I first met Ernie Kuh in the late 1980s during one of his many visits to Imperial College in London. He very kindly invited me to spend my sabbatical at Berkeley in 1992, when I learned from him how to be a good host. Upon my arrival, I was surprised, and with fond appreciation to this day, that he had organised a dinner party for me and another academic visitor, introducing both of us to his many colleagues in EECS at Berkeley. This and many other kind acts on his part made my six-month long sabbatical most enjoyable and very productive.

In 1994, I invited Ernie for a return visit to spend the summer with us at Imperial as a Distinguished Research Fellow. Since that year, and until about five years ago, he and his wife Bettine visited us almost every year, making us their “home away from home” in London. Our interactions have not only been on technical subjects alone, but also on many other many other topics: family, life and even politics.

I and many of my colleagues at Imperial College have benefitted enormously from our friendship with Ernie and Bettine. He was always generous with his time, wise in his advice, critical in his assessment and bold in his vision. He is very much missed by all of us at Imperial College, and none more so than I.


Massoud Pedram: I had the honor of being a PhD student of Prof. Ernest Kuh in the EECS department at the University of California, Berkeley from 1986 to 1991. I cannot begin to describe everything that I have learned from him, not only as a graduate student seeking to acquire technical knowledge and knowhow from him, but also as a researcher and scholar trying to learn the methodology and ways that one would employ in order to start and maintain a successful research career in academia. With Prof. Kuh as my academic advisor and mentor, I have had the privilege of learning firsthand from the master. What I learned from him was that it is important to take on challenging technical problems in which one can make serious substantive contributions to truly advance the state of the art. And yet, it is equally important to develop rigorous and elegant solutions to these problems, solutions that stand out under scrutiny and over time. These lessons have shaped my academic career, and I am so grateful to Prof Kuh for these teachings and much more. 


Janet Meiling Roveda: I am Ernie’s last Ph.D. student graduated from his group, the 40th of his Ph.D. students. Many of us got to know him by reading his papers and books. I was one of lucky ones that had him as my advisor for five and a half years, a period of time that completely brought me to a different path and level I could never imagine. I enjoyed every minute when I was his student: from failed research ideas to long and difficult innovation process, and to the happy moment when new ideas worked. With him, I saw the path of being a solid researcher and scholar with high integrity and the path of joy and passion of science and engineering areas.

It is not just VLSI that I learned from Ernie. Just like me, Ernie came to the States from a faraway land. He opened his heart to this country and helped numerous people in need through his foundation. Years after his retirement, I still read news about him providing donations to elementary schools and universities. Nothing could stop him. Today, when new students step into my office, it always reminds me of that first day I met Ernie. He just came back from swimming. I was very nervous. And he said “let us see how much you know about VLSI.”

I visited Ernie frequently after I graduated. Sometimes, we met in conferences. We always had lunches or dinners. He coached me to handle various tough situations in my career years after my graduation. He was always so supportive. I thought that he would always be there for me until I received an email from CK Cheng in June. For days, I could not accept this news. Every year, I sent him Christmas greeting email summarizing what I have achieved this year. He always answered with advice and comments. Now for the first time, I realize that he wouldn’t be there answering my emails anymore.


Tsu-Jae King Liu: Prof. Kuh continued to be engaged with the EECS Department at UC Berkeley long after his retirement, taking an active interest in the lives of the faculty members as well as the well being of the department. He was generous in word and deed, and set an outstanding example in mentorship with grace and kindness. His legacy in the ever-expanding field of electronic systems will continue to grow through his former students (and their students) and all those whom he inspired.


Paul R. Gray: I first met Ernie when I was a young assistant professor candidate at Berkeley in 1972. He was the department chair at the time and I remember so well going into his office for that interview- a really intimidating experience at first!! Ernie by that time was a towering figure- an internationally recognized leader in his field and a key campus leader. I recall how he sensed my nervousness and took great pains to put me at ease and establish a personal relationship- that talk ended up being the first of so may over the next 40 years- I can remember countless times going to his office and asking his advice on administrative matters, either for the department, the college, or the campus- and always getting great ideas and thoughts- I almost always followed Ernie’s advice- and the few times I didn’t I usually regretted it.

Ernie was a towering figure in his academic discipline, but he was also a pioneer in academic leadership. When I got involved in administration at Berkeley later on, I came to appreciate the many things that Ernie had started that in subsequent years shaped not only the college but provided examples of new models for the rest of the campus, and indeed for public universities across the country. He broke new ground in many areas as Dean of Engineering in the 1970s, especially in developing private support for the college in campus, something we take for granted today but which was a relatively new idea in a public university then. He was a builder of Berkeley in so many ways. He provided a great role model for colleagues who followed because of his immense integrity, his incredible wisdom, his willingness to share that wisdom with those who asked him for advice, and his selfless dedication and commitment to family life and to the Berkeley campus where he spent virtually his entire career. He lives on in those of us who he helped along the way and who he inspired.