Arthur Richard Newton (

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, Australia, 1 July 1951 – 2 January 2007) was the dean of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

College of Engineering Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional practice of engineering. It includes an initial education (bachelor's and/or master's degree), and any advanced education and specializations that ...

Career

Newton was educated at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...

and received a BE in 1973 and MEng.Sci in 1975. He then went to Berkeley in 1975 to work on

SPICE A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spices a ...

(Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis), a program initially developed by Larry Nagel and

Donald Pederson Donald Oscar Pederson (September 30, 1925 – December 25, 2004) was an American professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the designers of SPICE, a simulator for integrated circuits that has been u ...

to analyse and design complex electronic circuitry with speed and accuracy. It is claimed that nearly all electronic

integrated circuit An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...

s have been designed using SPICE or a derivative since the 1980s. University of California, Berkeley awarded Newton a PhD in 1978 and, unusually, an Engineering Faculty position as well. He was appointed assistant professor in 1978, associate professor in 1982 and full professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1985. He chaired the department from 1999 to 2000, and was dean of the College of Engineering and the Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering from 2000 until his death.

Robert Birgeneau Robert Joseph Birgeneau (born March 25, 1942) is a Canadian-American physicist and university administrator. He was the ninth chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley from 2004-13, and the fourteenth president of the University of Toro ...

Chancellor Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...

of UC Berkeley described him as, "Dynamic and entrepreneurial, he understood the power of engineering and technology in entirely new ways, and he connected them to addressing society's toughest problems. The vibrancy of his thinking shaped my own ideas about what engineering is and what it can be. This

is death In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' i ...

/nowiki> is an enormous loss for those at UC Berkeley, for California, and indeed for the international engineering community."

Personal

Newton was born in 1951 at

Gardenvale, Victoria Gardenvale is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Glen Eira local government area. Gardenvale recorded a population of 1,019 at the 2021 census. History ...

to Rodger and Bette Newton. He was married to Petra Michel, and had two daughters. He died at 55 due to

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of t ...

at the

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...

Medical Center.

Memorials

In February 2007 a professorship in his honour was established at Berkeley, called the Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professorship. This was established with funding from the EDA Consortium and other friends, colleagues and corporate partners of Newton. The Professorship will specifically advance the field of

synthetic biology Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature. It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad ran ...

, an emerging area in which he took a deep interest. In July 2007, Microsoft announced an academic award program for new, innovative applications of information technology in the spirit of Newton's longtime ideal. He had been on the Microsoft Research Technical Advisory Board for many years. The IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation and the ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation have jointly established the ACM/IEEE A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award named in his honour. It is a yearly award which honours outstanding technical contributions in the field of automated electronic design and was first awarded in 2009. The Design Automation Conference has established the A. Richard Newton Graduate Scholarship in his honour. It supports graduate research and study in design automation. It was first awarded in 2008. The

Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology AnitaB.org (formerly Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and Institute for Women in Technology) is a global nonprofit organization based in Belmont, California. Founded by computer scientists Anita Borg and Telle Whitney, the institute' ...

has established the A. Richard Newton Educator Award recognising teaching practices, techniques and innovative approaches which encourages girls and women to study engineering, science and mathematics. It recognises Newton's contribution to encouraging women in technology. It was first awarded in 2011.

Awards and recognition

He was the 2003 recipient of the

Phil Kaufman Award The Phil Kaufman Award was established in 1994 by the EDA Consortium (now the Electronic System Design Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community) to recognize individuals for their impact on electronic design by their contributions to electronic de ...

. The University of Melbourne awarded him an LLD in 2003. He was member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

since 2004, and in 2006, was named to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

References

External links

Selected presentations and papers by Richard Newton and articles about him.
List provided by

UC Berkeley College of Engineering The University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering, branded as Berkeley Engineering, is the engineering wing of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1931, the c ...

Newton's CV

Who was A. Richard Newton?
Profile by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation {{DEFAULTSORT:Newton, Arthur Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Australian emigrants to the United States Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard Newton, A. Richard People from the City of Glen Eira Engineers from Melbourne