Azriel Rosenfeld (February 19, 1931 – February 22, 2004) was an American Research Professor, a Distinguished University Professor, and Director of the Center for Automation Research at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...

, Maryland, where he also held affiliate professorships in the Departments of

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, and

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

, and a talmid chochom. He held a Ph.D. in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

(1957), rabbinic ordination (1952) and a Doctor of Hebrew Literature degree (1955) from

Yeshiva University Yeshiva University is a private Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City."About YU
on the Yeshiva Universit ...

, honorary Doctor of Technology degrees from Linkoping University (1980) and

Oulu University The University of Oulu ( fi, Oulun yliopisto) is one of the largest universities in Finland, located in the city of Oulu. It was founded on July 8, 1958. The university has around 13,000 students and 2,900 staff. 21 International Master's P ...

(1994), and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Yeshiva University (2000); he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the Technion (2004, conferred posthumously). He was a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(1994). Rosenfeld was a leading researcher in the field of

computer image analysis Image analysis or imagery analysis is the extraction of meaningful information from images; mainly from digital images by means of digital image processing techniques. Image analysis tasks can be as simple as reading bar coded tags or as sophist ...

. Over a period of nearly 40 years he made many fundamental and pioneering contributions to nearly every area of that field. He wrote the first textbook in the field (1969); was founding editor of its first journal, ''

Computer Graphics and Image Processing ''Graphical Models'' is an academic journal in computer graphics and geometry processing publisher by Elsevier. , its editor-in-chief is Jorg Peters of the University of Florida. History This journal has gone through multiple names. Founded in 1 ...

'' (1972); and was co-chairman of its first international conference (1987). He published over 30 books and over 600 book chapters and journal articles, and directed nearly 60 Ph.D. dissertations. Rosenfeld's research on digital image analysis (specifically on

digital geometry Digital geometry deals with discrete sets (usually discrete point sets) considered to be digitized models or images of objects of the 2D or 3D Euclidean space. Simply put, digitizing is replacing an object by a discrete set of its points. Th ...

and

digital topology Digital topology deals with properties and features of two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) digital images that correspond to topological properties (e.g., connectedness) or topological features (e.g., boundaries) of objects. Concepts an ...

, and on the accurate measurement of statistical features of digital images) in the 1960s and 1970s formed the foundation for a generation of industrial vision inspection systems that have found widespread applications from the automotive to the electronics industry. Rosenfeld was a ''ba'al koreh'' ( Torah Reader) at Young Israel Shomrai Emunah of Greater Washington for many years until he moved to

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

in 2001. In honor of the memory of Rosenfeld, ICCV gives the biennial

Azriel Rosenfeld Award In computer vision, the Azriel Rosenfeld Award, or Azriel Rosenfeld Life Time Achievement Award was established at ICCV 2007 in Rio de Janeiro to honor outstanding researchers who are recognized as making significant contributions to the field o ...

to a living person in the recognition of an outstanding life-time contribution to the field of image understanding or computer vision.

References

External links

History page of CS Dep at UoM

PhD students of Azriel Rosenfeld

Nagao: In memory of Prof. A. Rosenfeld

Cantoni and Levialdi: Azriel Rosenfeld and the genesis of modern image systems

Pavlidis: Discrete geometry and Azriel Rosenfeld

1994 Harry H. Goode Memorial Award Recipient Azriel Rosenfeld

(IJCV) Davis: In memory of Azriel Rosenfeld

Elsevier's biography for Azriel Rosenfeld

(IEEE PAMI) Chellappa and Kriegman: In memoriam, Azriel Rosenfeld (1931-2004)

Books by Azriel Rosenfeld

* ttps://books.google.com/books/about/Advances_in_image_understanding.html?id=EuxRAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y Advances in image understanding: a festschrift for Azriel Rosenfeld
Memorial service Azriel Rosenfeld

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenfeld, Azriel Computer vision researchers Digital geometry 20th-century American Jews Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery 1931 births 2004 deaths Fellows of the International Association for Pattern Recognition University of Maryland, College Park faculty 21st-century American Jews