A. Richard Newton

Who was A. Richard Newton?

Arthur Richard Newton was the dean of the University of California, Berkeley College of Engineering.

Newton was educated at the University of Melbourne and received a BE in 1973 and M.Eng.Sci in 1975. He then went to Berkeley in 1975 to work on SPICE, a program initially developed by Larry Nagel and Donald Pederson to analyze and design complex electronic circuitry with speed and accuracy. It is claimed that nearly all electronic IC's have been designed using SPICE or a derivative since the 1980s.

University of California, Berkeley awarded Newton a Ph.D in 1978 and unusually an Engineering Faculty position as well. He was appointed assistant professor in 1978, associate professor in 1982 and full professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 1985. He chaired the department from 1999 to 2000, and was dean of the College of Engineering and the Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering from 2000 until his death.

Robert Birgeneau, Chancellor of UC Berkeley described him as, "Dynamic and entrepreneurial, he understood the power of engineering and technology in entirely new ways, and he connected them to addressing society's toughest problems. The vibrancy of his thinking shaped my own ideas about what engineering is and what it can be. This [his death] is an enormous loss for those at UC Berkeley, for California, and indeed for the international engineering community."