Gene F. Franklin received the Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1950 the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1952, and the Doctor of Engineering Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 1955. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University from 1955-1957 and has been on the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University since 1957 where he is now Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus. He was Vice Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering from 1989-1994 and was Chairman of the Department for the 1994-1995 He was Director of the Information Systems Laboratory from its founding in 1962 until 1971 and was Associate Provost for Computing for Stanford University from 1971-1975. He is co-author of three books: Sampled Data Systems, Digital Control of Dynamic Systems and Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems. The Second Edition of the last of these books received the IFAC prize as the best book in the controls area published during the period 1987-1990; the fifth edition is now in preparation. Professor Franklin has supervised the research of over 60 Ph.D. candidates in many aspects of control and systems. Prof. Franklin has for many years been an active member of the IEEE. He joined as a Student Member in April, 1950, and became a Life Fellow of the Institute in January, 1993. He was on the Board of Directors of the CSS from 1982 until 1988 and was Vice President for Technical Affairs for 1985 and 1986. He was General Chairman of the JACC of 1964 and General Chairman of the CDC in 1984. He received the Ragazzini Education Award of the AACC for 1985,.and gave the Bode Lecture at the1994 CDC. He is a Distinguished Member of the CSS and Franklin and Abramovitch were awarded the prize for the best paper published in the CSM in 2003. for their review of the control of disk drives.