Childhood and Studies

Algirdas Avizienis was born in Kaunas, Lithuania on July 8, 1932 and received his primary education there. His family left Lithuania in 1944 and lived in UN-IRO "displaced person" camps in Western Germany in 1945-50, where he graduated from the Lithuanian Gymnasium at Hanau in 1949. He has resided in the United States since March, 1950.

He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in electrical engineering, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1954, 1955, and 1960, respectively.

From 1956 to 1960 he was associated with the Digital Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois as a Research Assistant and Fellow, participating in the design of the ILLIAC II computer and completing a Ph.D. thesis that devised the class of "signed-digit" number systems for fast digital arithmetic.