title: Tommaso Toffoli
text: # Tommaso Toffoli
  
  Tommaso Toffoli (Italian pronunciation:) is an Italian-American professor of electrical and computer engineering at Boston University where he joined the faculty in 1995. He has worked on cellular automata and the theory of artificial life (with Edward Fredkin and others), and is known for the invention of the Toffoli gate.
  
  ## Early life and career
  
  He was born in June, 1943 in Montereale Valcellina, in northeastern Italy, to Francesco and Valentina (Saveri) Toffoli and was raised in Rome. He received his laurea in physics (equivalent to a Master's degree) from the University of Rome La Sapienza in 1967.
  
  Toffoli moved to the United States in 1969.
  
  In 1976 he received a Ph.D. in computer and communication science from the University of Michigan, then in 1978 he joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a principal research scientist, where he remained until 1995, when he joined the faculty of Boston University.
  
  ## Books
  
  * Cellular Automata Machines: A New Environment for Modeling, MIT Press (1987), with Norman Margolus. ISBN 0-262-20060-0.
  