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KING-SUN FU
1930-1985
BY M. E. VAN VALKENBURG
KING SUN FU W M. Goss Distinguished Professor of Engi-
neering at Purdue University and pioneer and universally ac-
cIaimed leader in the field of syntactic pattern recognition,
died of a sudden heart attack on April 29, 1985, in Washing-
ton, D.C. His cleath came while he was attending a National
Research Council dinner celebrating the National Science
Foundation's creation of six new engineering research cen-
ters. Professor Fu was director of one of the centers the
new Intelligent Manufacturing Center at Purdue University.
King-sun Fu was born in Nanking, China, on October 2,
1930. He received a B.S. from the National Taiwan Univer-
sity in 1953, an M.S. from the University of Toronto in 1955,
and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 1959, all in
electrical engineering.
From the beginning, Professor Fu saw no conflict between
basic research and its applications. He believes! that if the
basic research were sufficiently deep and powerful, it would
solve many Circuit practical problems. Conversely, he be-
lieved that important practical problems were not to be suc-
cessfuliy solved by act hoc methods without involving a deep
theoretical foundation.
While still in Taiwan, King-sun Fu worked in inclustry, first
at the Taiwan Power Company and later with the Chinese
Broadcasting Company. After he received his doctorate, he
175
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176
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
made the difficult decision to gain further experience by
joining the Boeing Airplane Company as a research engineer
in 1959. The desire to teach never left him, however, and
during the spring of 1960 Professor Fu taught a course at
Seattle University. The following fall, he accepted an ap-
pointment at Purdue University.
Shortly after Dr. Fu's arrival at Purdue, his department
head, the late Thomas F. ~ones, suggested that Dr. Fu spend
a semester at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That laboratory ex-
perience changed the path of his professional life because it
marked the initiation of Professor Fu's interest in pattern
recognition. On his return to Purdue, Dr. Fu's interests ex-
pandec! to such topics as machine intelligence, image pro-
cessing, computer vision, and expert system clevelopment.
Dr. Fu was known for his innovative ideas and his practical
applications of them for example, the identification and
classification of crops from remotely sensed multisectorial
data, the detection of irracliated chromosomes, and the com-
puterization of a blooc! cell classification system. He also de-
velopecl X-ray techniques for the automatic diagnosis of ab-
normalities of lungs, heart, liver, and pancreas. Other of his
X-ray applications involved the identification and cIassifica-
tion of fingerprints. Even more recently, Dr. Fu's methods
have been applied to integrated circuit chip and metal sur-
face inspections, which are both important to industrial au-
tomation.
At the time of his death, Professor Fu hac! supervised
seventy-five Ph.D. students who now hold positions of lead-
ership in industry and academia. In addition, he published
more than three hundred papers and four books.
Throughout his professional career, King-sun Fu received
numerous awards and much recognition. The most impor-
tant of these are the American Society for Engineering Edu-
cation Senior Research Award (1981), the Institute of Elec-
trical ant! Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Education Medal
(1982), and the Harry Goocle Memorial Award from the
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KING-SUN FU
177
American Federation of Information Processing Societies
(19821. King-sun Fu was electecI to the National Academy of
Engineering in 1976.
Dr. Fu was the founding editor of the journal IEEE Trans-
actions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. In addition,
he server! his profession in many other ways for example,
as vice-president for publications of the IEEE Computer So-
ciety and as the first presiclent of the International Associa-
tion for Pattern Recognition. From 1965 until his death, he
held more than forty-five volunteer positions in various or-
ganizations mostly those of the IEEE. He was also a visiting
professor at Stanforc! University as a Guggenheim fellow and
a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley
on two different occasions.
Dr. Fu traveled widely, especially to assist his colleagues in
Taiwan. He was frequently a member of American clelega-
tions to international conferences in such places as Moscow,
Warsaw, Copenhagen, and Tokyo.
King-sun met his wife, Viola, while they were students at
the University of Illinois. Thereafter, Viola was a constant
companion throughout his lifetime of adventures. They had
two sons, Francis and Thomas, ant] a daughter, June.
King-sun Fu never (leclinecl requests for help from his col-
leagues ant! students, whether clay or night. He never asked
for credit for himself. His greatness as a researcher, teacher,
and person continues to shine through.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
machine intelligence
