Nabil H. Farhat
About Optica
In Memoriam: Nabil H. Farhat, 1933-2020
03 November 2020
Nabil Hasan Farhat, OSA Fellow and Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, PA, passed away on 3 November 2020 at the age of 87. Farhat was a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, with a focus on optoelectronics and photonics. He was known for both his early work on the optical realization of neural networks, and his more recent research on the qualitative theory of nonlinear dynamics, bifurcation and chaos and its application to the modeling and understanding of cortical dynamics in the brain.
Farhat was born in Palestine on 3 November 1933 and studied Electrical Engineering at The Tehnion in Haifa, where he received a BS degree. He moved to the US to attend the University of Tennessee (MS degree) and then the University of Pennsylvania for his PhD. Farhat joined the faculty of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1964 and served as Head of the Electro-Optics and Photonic Neuroengineering Laboratory. Farhat would spend his entire career at the University of Pennsylvania and retire in 2012.
Farhat was recognized with numerous awards and honors during his career including being named a Fellow of IEEE and OSA (1984). He also received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. He was also recognized as the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Visiting Distinguished Scientist, an Invited Guest Speaker at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Scientific Council on Cybernetics, Moscow, and a Member of the Electromagnetics Academy. Farhat held four patents and published numerous articles and conference papers. He authored two books, Biomorphic Networks for ATR and Higher-Level Processing (1999) and Advances in Holography Vol.3 (1976).
Colleagues of Farhat noted that he found great joy in life and was generous with his time, always willing to discuss ideas with students and fellow researchers. He is survived by his wife, Joan English, and his extended family.
OSA and the scientific community mourn the loss of Nabil Hasan Farhat.
