Computer science giant Gerald Estrin remembered

Gerald Estrin, professor emeritus, died March 29 at his home in Santa Monica of natural causes. He was 90.

Estrin, a founding member of UCLA’s computer science department, joined the university faculty in 1956. His research interests included the creation of effective environments for collaborative design and advances in design methods and tools, according to Estrin’s biography on UCLA’s computer science faculty page.

He served as chairman of the computer science department twice before retiring in 1991.

After retirement, Estrin maintained ties with the university. He continued to attend faculty meetings, and remained an avid fan of the UCLA basketball team, said Leonard Kleinrock, distinguished professor of computer science and a friend and colleague of Estrin.

Estrin’s family, friends and colleagues described him as a generous, thoughtful and incredibly curious man who enjoyed opera, history, politics, and was also an ardent supporter of women’s rights.

Vijay Dhir, dean of UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, praised Estrin’s character and commitment to his work.

“He was a gentleman and scholar of the highest order,” Dhir said.

He said Estrin supported the school in its efforts to bring in more women into the engineering field.

Estrin had a “boyish curiosity,” said Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google. Cerf, who was a graduate student of Estrin’s, said Estrin was as interested, if not more interested, in some of the questions his graduate students were researching.

Both Kleinrock and Cerf said Estrin was humble, but deserves the highest recognition for his accomplishments.

“He was a quiet giant in our field,” Cerf said.

Deborah Estrin, a professor in computer science and Gerald Estrin’s daughter, said her father’s curiosity extended far beyond computer science.

Growing up, she said she and her sisters would always think twice about asking their father for homework help ““ Estrin would inevitably end up deriving math formulas, or looking for the origin of words for their English assignments.

“My father wasn’t about quick shortcuts,” she said. “It was about maximizing the teachable moments from everything.”

Estrin challenged his students in a gentle way, asking difficult questions, but never being demeaning, said Steve Crocker, CEO and cofounder of Shinkuro, a research and development company. Crocker worked for and was supervised by Estrin as an undergraduate and graduate student over an 11-year period at UCLA.

“He was the very model of what I thought a professor would be,” Crocker said.

Deborah Estrin said that her father completed every task with thought and consideration, believing that each thing was important to be done and part of one’s life work.

“Doing things to go through the motions was antithetical to who he was,” she said.

Estrin was born in New York on Sept. 9, 1921, where he met and married his wife of 70 years, Thelma Estrin, a professor emerita at UCLA in the computer science department.

He received his bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees at the University of Wisconsin. He went on to lead in the development of WEIZAC, the first large-scale electronic computer outside of the United States and Western Europe, in Israel, before joining the UCLA faculty.

Estrin was an Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Fellow, a distinction conferred for a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments, as well as a member of the board of governors of the Weizmann Institute of Science, a university and research institute in Israel.

He is survived by his wife, Thelma; daughters Margo, Judy and Deborah; and four grandchildren.