Dr. John Lof is an emeritus professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering. During World War II, the U.S. government used a computer at MIT to calculate trajectories for battleship cannons. John Lof was one of the graduate students at MIT who worked on that computer, and he brought his new-found expertise to UConn as an assistant professor of electrical engineering in 1952. Dr. Lof was instrumental in the introduction of digital computers at UConn, and in 1961, he was appointed the first director of the University’s newly created Computer Center and spent thousands of hours helping faculty, staff and students understand the use and usefulness of computers. Together with the late Taylor Booth, Dr. Lof developed the School’s first computer science curriculum within the Electrical Engineering Department in 1972; it was fully accredited in 1977. In early 2010 he bequeathed the sum total of his 30 years of UConn retirement benefits – $1 million – to the University.
John L. C. Lof Non-Endowed Fund for Graduate Education
Gifts to the John L. C. Lof Non-Endowed Fund for Graduate Education provide support for programmatic enhancements in Engineering’s Graduate Program.
