Jeffrey Locke Elman

Jeffrey Locke Elman was born on January 22, 1948 in Burbank, California to Mildred Mae McDaniel and Irving Stanton Elman, whom he called Tex and Irv. Along with brother Cory, Jeff traversed the country 20 times with his family before the age of 16, living in New York City and Palisades, New York before finally settling in Pacific Palisades, California. Tex and Irv wrote and produced for television, movies, and the theater, providing for a colorful, and at times unconventional, childhood. Jeff graduated from Palisades High School in 1965 (made famous by Time Magazine’s cover story ‘Today’s Teenagers’ and the book “What Really Happened to the Class of ‘65?”). He spent the summer before college living with a local family in Uganda through an American Field Service program.

Jeff attended Harvard University and graduated in 1969 with an AB in Social Relations and phone hacking, which brought him to the attention of the FBI. After college he worked as a computer programmer and bilingual high school teacher with a sideline in political activism. In 1970, Jeff met his wife Margaret Ravel in Cambridge . They married in 1972 and moved to Austin, Texas where they both attended the University of Texas at Austin for graduate school. Their daughter, Emily Luz Elman, was born in Austin in 1975. Jeff received his Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1977 and later that year, joined the faculty of the University of California, San Diego in the Linguistics Department. Son, Jeremy Andrew Elman, was born in San Diego in 1981.

While at UCSD, Jeff co-founded the world’s first Department of Cognitive Science in 1986. In 1990, he introduced the simple recurrent neural network, also known as the 'Elman network', which is capable of processing sequentially ordered stimuli, and has since become widely used. Between 2006 and 2014, Jeff served as the Dean of the Division of Social Sciences and most recently, he and Rajesh Gupta co-founded the UCSD Halicioğlu Data Science Institute. In October 2016 Jeff was was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in recognition of his life’s work.

Jeff and Ray Eller met in 1995 and registered as Domestic Partners in 2001 until they were married in 2016. Together, Jeff and Ray shared a very happy life filled with family, close friends, and two of the best dogs in the world, Billy and Jasper. Jeff was a passionate naturalist and photographer. He and Ray volunteered as docents at Torrey Pines State Reserve. Jeff was also an active fund raiser for causes he held close including the IRC, Yalla, Torrey Pines, and he was in the beginnings of a role to raise funds and awareness for the Ornish program at UCSD’s Cardiac Rehab Unit.

Jeff found joy in his grandchildren, Stella Mae and Oliver Locke, children of Emily Elman and her husband Nate Flansburgh, and Henry Jacob and Elise Marie Austen, children of Jeremy Elman and his wife Erin Clevenger Elman. As with his children, he had a unique ability to spark a sense of wonder in his grandchildren, creating special worlds out of crafts and art and storytelling. His singular gift was his ability to listen, with complete focus and without judgment.

Jeff will be remembered in the hearts of all who met him for his humility, gentleness, kindness and the love he freely gave to all.