Leon O. Chua 

Leon O. Chua was a Purdue electrical engineering faculty member from 1964 to 1970. He is the inventor and namesake of Chua's circuit, one of the first and most widely known circuits to exhibit chaotic behavior. Chua also was the first to conceive the theories behind, and postulate the existence of, the memristor. Thirty-seven years after Chua predicted its existence, a working solid-state memristor was created by a team at Hewlett-Packard. Memristors can recognize and "remember" the amount of electrical current that passes through them and have the potential to revolutionize integrated circuit technology, possibly even leading to processors that can mimic the neural and synaptic functions of the human brain. Today, the memristor is used for many applications, including digital memory, neuromorphic systems, and logic circuits, it has the potential to provide low-energy consumption artificial intelligence. It has become the fourth fundamental electric circuit element, offering applications throughout electrical engineering.