Lotfi A.Zadeh.
Zadeh was born in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR as Lotfi Aliaskerzadeh.His father was Rahim Aleskerzade, an Iranian Muslim Azerbaijani journalist from Ardabil on assignment from Iran, and his mother was Fanya (Feyga) Korenman, a Jewish pediatrician from Odesa, Ukraine, who was an Iranian citizen.
The Soviet government at this time courted foreign correspondents, and the family lived well while in Baku.
Zadeh attended elementary school for three years there,which he said "had a significant long-lasting influence on my thinking and my way of looking at
things."
Iran
In 1931, when Stalin began agricultural collectivization,and Zadeh was ten, his father moved his family back to Tehran, Iran. Zadeh was enrolled in Alborz High School, a missionary school,where he was educated for the next eight years, and where he met his future wife,
Fay (Faina) Zadeh, who said that he was "deeply influenced" by the "extremely decent, fine, honest and helpful" Presbyterian missionaries from the United States who ran the college. "To me they represented the best that you could find in the United States – people from the Midwest with strong roots.
They were really 'Good Samaritans' – willing to give of themselves for the benefit of others. So this kind of attitude influenced me deeply. It also instilled in me a deep desire to live in the United States." During this time, Zadeh was awarded several patents.Zadeh sat for the Iran national university exams and placed third in the nation.
As a student, he ranked first in his class in his first two years. In 1942, he graduated from the University of Tehran with a degree in electrical engineering, one of only three students in that field to graduate that year, due to the turmoil created by World War II, when the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran.
Over 30,000 American soldiers were based there, and Zadeh worked with his father, who did business with them as a contractor for hardware and building materials.