A. Richard Newton

Arthur Richard Newton (born July 1, 1951 in Gardenvale , Melbourne , † January 2, 2007 in San Francisco ) was an Australian computer scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley . He was one of the pioneers of electronic design automation .

Life

Newton studied electrical engineering at the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor's degree in 1973 and a master's degree in 1975 and then went to the University of Berkeley, where he (starting as a student in Australia from 1973) on the SPICE program from Larry Nagel and Donald Pederson worked (a well-known development and simulation program for electronic circuits). In 1978 he received his doctorate from Pederson at Berkeley (dissertation: The simulation of large-scale integrated circuits ) and in the same year became Assistant Professor, 1982 Associate Professor and 1985 Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He headed the faculty from 1999 to 2000 and was Roy W. Carlson Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering from 2000 (he was particularly known for promoting women in engineering professions). He died of pancreatic cancer.

Newton dealt with test, verification and synthesis tools for the design of electronic circuits. He worked closely with the microelectronics industry and his research with Pedersen helped found SDA Systems (later Cadence Design Systems) and Synopsys. He was the founder of the Gigascale Systems Research Center, which resulted from the collaboration between the university and industry. In 2001 he founded the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at various California universities with headquarters in Berkeley, which was primarily intended to address global social problems using information technology. He also promoted synthetic biology shortly before his death.

In 2003 he received the Phil Kaufman Award for Electronic Design Automation (EDA). In 2007 a chair in Berkeley was named after him and since 2009 a prize named after him for Electronic Design Automation by the Association for Computing Machinery (Special Interest Group on Design Automation) and IEEE has been awarded for the first time (ACM / IEEE A. Richard Newton Technical Impact Award ). He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

He was on the technical advisory committee of Microsoft Research for a long time.

He was married to Petra Michel and had two daughters.

Fonts (selection)

with Srini Devadas : Sequential Logic Testing and Verification , Springer 1992.
with Pranav Ashar, Srini Devadas: Sequential Logic Synthesis , Springer, Kluwer 1992.
with Resve Saleh, Shyh-Jye Jou: Mixed-Mode Simulation and Analog Multilevel Simulation , Springer 1994.
with Timothy J. Barnes, David Harrison, Rick L. Spickelmier: Electronic CAD Frameworks , Springer 1992.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Newton, A. Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Newton, Arthur Richard (full name); Newton, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Australian computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 1, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH	Gardenvale
DATE OF DEATH	January 2, 2007
Place of death	San Francisco