Alfred Inselberg (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: אלפרד אינסלברג) (22 October 1936,

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

– 30 December 2019,

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

) was an

American-Israeli Israeli Americans () are Americans who are of full or partial Israeli descent. The Israeli-American community, while predominantly Jewish, also includes various ethnic and religious minorities reflective of Israel's diverse demographics. This c ...

mathematician and computer scientist based at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

. Inselberg started his career at the

Biological Computer Laboratory The Biological Computer Laboratory (BCL) was a research institute of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It was founded on 1 January 1958, by then Professor of Electrical Engineering Heinz von Foe ...

based at

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

. He was part of a

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

group working on

biomathematics Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development ...

developing mathematical models of the ear,

neural networks A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either Cell (biology), biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a netwo ...

, and computer models for vision and non-linear analysis, gaining a PhD in mathematics and physics. During this period he participated in the

Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization The Symposium on Principles of Self-Organization was held at Robert Allerton Park#Allerton House .28The Farms.29, Allerton House on 8–9 June 1960. It was a key conference in the development of cybernetics and was in many ways a continuation of the ...

. He is particularly noted for his work on

parallel coordinates Parallel Coordinates plots are a common method of visualizing high-dimensional datasets to analyze multivariate data having multiple variables, or attributes. To plot, or visualize, a set of points in ''n''-dimensional space, ''n'' parallel l ...

(, , -coords), which he proposed in 1959, for the visualization of multidimensional geometries (as in linear algebra) and multivariate problems.

Early life and education

Alfred Inselberg- With sectioned ME 163 Rocket Motor -- 1954

Inselberg was born in

. Later he attended

Whittingehame College Whittingehame is a parish with a small village in East Lothian, Scotland, about halfway between Haddington and Dunbar, and near East Linton. The area is on the slopes of the Lammermuir Hills. Whittingehame Tower dates from the 15th century and ...

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) receiving a B.Sc. in Aeronautical Engineering. Together with Gary van Sant, and two other students under the guidance of Paul Torda, they founded the University of Illinois Rocket Society in 1953; four years prior to Sputnik. Continuing his studies at UIUC he obtained in 1965 a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Physics under the joint guidance of Ray Langebartel and

Heinz von Foerster Heinz von Foerster (; November 13, 1911 – October 2, 2002) was an Austrian-American scientist combining physics and philosophy, and widely attributed as the originator of second-order cybernetics. He was twice a Guggenheim fellow (1956–57 and ...

Career

Inselberg held senior research positions at IBM where he developed a mathematical model of the ear (cochlea) (Time November 1974) and later collision-avoidance algorithms for air traffic control (3 USA patents). Concurrently he had joint appointments at UCLA, USC, Technion and Ben Gurion University. Since 1995 he has been a professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences of

. He was elected senior fellow at the San Diego Supercomputing Center in 1996. His textbook on "Parallel Coordinates: Visual Multidimensional Geometry", was published by Springer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Inselberg, Alfred Cyberneticists 20th-century American mathematicians American computer scientists 21st-century American mathematicians 1936 births 2019 deaths Academic staff of Tel Aviv University Grainger College of Engineering alumni