by Scott Jordan
Tomás Lang, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, passed away April 7, 2018.
Tomás was born in Czechoslovakia on March 28, 1938, and fled with his family to Chile in 1939 where he grew up in the Chilean capital of Santiago. He received the Professional Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad de Chile in 1965. He immigrated to the United States and received the MS degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 and the PhD degree from Stanford University in 1974. From 1974 to 1978, he served as a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Tomás then served during 1978 to 1986 as a faculty member at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia Spain, where he founded their Department of Computer Architecture, before returning to UCLA. From 1991 to 2010, Tomás served at UCI as a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and then in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Tomás’ research focus was on computer arithmetic. He was an exacting, insightful, and dedicated scholar, and he trained his students to approach research in the same manner. He believed the purpose of university research is to contribute to the world’s knowledge in one’s field. He argued that university researchers should be motivated by the creation of knowledge, regardless of its use in industry. Tomás passed on some of his learnings through several textbooks, and he encouraged other scholars to consider writing textbooks that focus on the most important and high-level aspects of the topic. Tomás greatly enjoyed his collaboration with other researchers in computer arithmetic, and frequently spent time in Spain to do so.
Tomás took his role as a member of the Faculty seriously. He was intensely interested in departmental and university matters, and he encouraged his colleagues to seriously think about both faculty rights and responsibilities. Tomás often served as a voice of conscience, and many of us learned from his efforts.
Tomás was an avid and skilled photographer, and a few of his photos hang in one of the EECS conference rooms. Tomás loved to read, and after retirement he could be found most days in the UCI library enjoying newspapers, periodicals and books. He also loved to discuss world affairs and politics, and after retirement he could often be found in Aldrich park enjoying a combination of lunch and discussion.
We will greatly miss him.
