IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - August 2022 - 52

Interview With Professor Yaakov Bar-Shalom
Yaakov: One memorable event was when the RAF overflew
Timisoara on their way to the Ploiesti oil fields (apparently to
dig some holes in the unplowed fields) and I was a bored
three-year old in a bomb shelter with my parents. I decided to
take a walk outside-luckily the planes had just flown over
Timisoara-and my father found me not too far and gave me
a reminder I did not forget.
Another item of interest from that period is what my
father told me about how the Jews from Romania " bought "
king Michael, so he would handle
the " Jewish Problem " in his way,
rather than letting the Nazis do it.
This way, most ofthe Jewish population
in Romania under his rule
escaped the Holocaust. Living in
an area where corruption exceeded
antisemitism had its advantages.
Peter: It is clear that a spirit of
research-of mathematics and
modeling but also relevance-is
very important to you. Did you
pick that up from your family?
Or schooling? Or has it always
been in you?
Yaakov: Two people in my life
instilled this in me: my high
school math teacher, nicknamed
" M squared, " who said: " I will
teach you a lot so you will
remember a little " (but I remembered
everything he taught...)
and my second-year electromagnetics professor ( " R
squared " -Remus Raduleț) who taught us (in addition to
the Greek alphabet) the mathematical rigor needed for
research and the fun one can derive from it. It was kind
of unheard of at the time to talk about matrices where
everybody was doing summations, but he was ahead of
his time at least for that part of the world. He got his
Ph.D. at the Zurich Polytechnic so I do not know if Einstein
was there at the time (the 1920s), so it is possible
they overlapped.
Peter: I know you emigrated to Israel in the late 1960s
from Romania. That is many years within a " People's
Republic. " What was your life like for you and your
family?
Yaakov: It was not easy. Sometimes we barely had any dinner.
Sometimes my mother was telling me " .. . runtothat
store they have eggs .. . run to that store they have cheese. "
We got help with packages from my uncle who lived in New
York at the time, so otherwise, we would have been much
worse off. I know after we left, things got even worse if that
is possible. And personally, I did not suffer from violent
52
antisemitism but it was always in the background, and being
one of the best in my class at the Polytechnic, you know
some people did not appreciate it. But especially my chemistry
professor, who failed me because I could not remember
the conductivity ofcopper and aluminum to five digits.
My father believed after the Nazis were vanquished that
socialism was the future until he saw his friends sent to the
local gulag and the fact that, while capitalism is characterized,
according to Marx, by the exploitation of people by
other people, socialism is
its opposite.
Yaakov in the Dead Sea in 1999. The caption was " Read the AES
Magazine to keep afloat. " The picture was actually taken by the
interviewer. A larger wave came by soon after this picture was
taken, followed by capsizing, and much coughing.
Peter: Can you give us an
idea ofyour pre-Technion
years in Haifa?
Yaakov: I had to learn
Hebrew before starting at
the Technion in about
three months (after which
I could read-without
vowels, as is customary
in Israel-a daily newspaper
about the Cuban
missile crisis) and during
the summer of 1961 I
worked cutting metal
sheets in an air conditioner
factory, which
added more impetus
toward studying for a
degree at the Technion.
Peter: You must have met some pretty big names at the
Technion? Was it stressful? Were you a good student?
Yaakov: In the first semester, I immediately started taking
notes in Hebrew (not writing vowels added to the notetaking
speed...) and finished with all As except in one
class where I blew the final and got a C. (Here is my
excuse: years later, I looked up that exam and found that
whoever typed one of the problems skipped one word
which made-for me, with my limited Hebrew-the problem
unintelligible...) The big names I enjoyed learning
from were Zakai (who gave me a recommendation that I
was in the top 25% of his class of four students) and Ziv,
who taught probability theory, which I still enjoy teaching
and using extensively.
Peter: I know you served in the Israeli Defense Forces. I
think many of us cannot imagine you in fatigues and carrying
a rifle. Please tell us about it. Did you see " action " ?
Yaakov: I was already an engineer, so I handled electronic
equipment for the Signal Corps-not particularly exciting.
My commander expressed his belief that the main job ofan
engineer in the Signal Corps was to run between two
IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
AUGUST 2022
IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - August 2022

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