In 1965, this Iranian engineer published a work that, with more than 35,000 mentions, would become one of the most cited scientific articles of the 20th century. It spoke for the first time of “fuzzy sets”, a term that would serve to develop fuzzy logic. Compared to classical logic, which establishes clearly delimited sets, fuzzy logic establishes complex areas, much more adjusted to reality. For example, we can define a good basketball player as someone who measuresmore than 1.85 meters and has good aim. The fuzzy logic allows, as a human coach would do, to include in the set of good players one who measured 1.84 but with excellent aim. In this way, fuzzy logic bridges the gap between classical logic and reality.
This concept, applied to machines, visibly improves the service they provide us. For example, it allows an automatic washing machine to choose the program appropriately based on the load, the dirt and the characteristics of the clothes. One of the first applications of fuzzy logic was the automatic metro in the Japanese city of Sendai, which made speed changes resemble those of an experienced human driver. Acceleration and braking force became more gradual, which in turn resulted in alower electricity consumption and in more comfortFor the users.
Zadeh’s contribution has earned him the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) category, which aims to recognize the contributions of those who make a better future possible for people through the advancement of knowledge, innovation and culture and its dissemination to society.
