Thomas Kailath

Thomas Kailath is an Indian-born American electrical engineer, information theorist, control engineer, entrepreneur, and the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering emeritus at Stanford University. Professor Kailath has authored several books, including the well-known book Linear Systems, which ranks as one of the most referenced books in the field of linear systems.
Kailath was born in 1935 in Pune, India, in a Syrian Christian family originally from Kerala. He studied at St. Vincent's High School. He received his Master's degree in 1959 and his doctorate in 1961, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was the first Indian-born student to receive a doctorate in electrical engineering from MIT. 
Kailath was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1984 for outstanding contributions in prediction, filtering, and signal processing, and for leadership in engineering.
In 2012, Kailath was awarded the National Medal of Science, presented by President Barack Obama in 2014 for "transformative contributions to the fields of information and system science, for distinctive and sustained mentoring of young scholars, and for translation of scientific ideas into entrepreneurial ventures that have had a significant impact on industry.” Kailath is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher and is generally recognized as one of the preeminent figures of twentieth-century electrical engineering.