Francis Fan Lee

Francis F. Lee (Li Fan) died peacefully on January 12, 2024; the proximate cause was renal failure. He was comforted by family, friends and students. Born in Nanjing China in 1927, sometime during the tail end of the Year of the Tiger, Francis gave himself the birthdate of January 28 because "128, a nice number, is the seventh power of two." Thus, Francis was just shy of 97 years old.
Francis was the second child and only son of Li Rumian and Zhou Huizhan, two respected educators. His youth was marked by both world and civil war. His father, a professor of English at Wuhan University, taught his children to speak English. This enabled Francis to serve as an interpreter for the US Office of Strategic Services, which in turn led to a passport and an unfunded scholarship for overseas study awarded by the Chinese government.
With permission from their mother (their father was in England), to fund both his and his older sister Li Ping's studies at the Sorbonne, the family rented out the family home in Nanjing to the British Consulate. In September 1948, Francis left China by steamship to travel to the United States to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When he left, he had no idea that he would never see his mother again.
While his father had directed him to mechanical engineering as his career, Francis's chance attendance of a 1943 exhibit of electronics in Chongqing had swept him off his feet: "I was in magic land: Electric eye opened gates, radio played music, vacuum tubes glowing." He earned his bachelor degree in electrical engineering in two years, his masters in one, and worked for two years in the PhD program before withdrawing in 1954 to work in industry and research as a naturalized citizen. Some of the projects he worked on include BIZMAC (RCA), UNIVAC (Remington Rand), and Project MAC (MIT), where he laid groundwork for the first digitally controlled milling machine, created universal code translators and reversible code convertors, and developed a forerunner of cache memory.
Francis returned to MIT in 1964 to complete his Ph.D. His studies were possible through the support of his wife Teresa, who managed a household of four children, and a Hertz Fellowship, which augmented their one month's savings. He earned his Ph.D in 1965. Offered a teaching position, he was hesitant and requested that he be allowed to try it out first. He enjoyed it, so six months later he became a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. He retired from MIT in 1987.
For the next few decades, Francis worked both at MIT and as an inventor. He loved putting "some clever ideas into useful products and having a good time doing the designs." His career as an inventor included work in digital cardiac monitoring (EKG monitor), digital audio delay (Delta T-101), and digital audio time-compression and expansion. The company Lexicon, which he founded with Charles Bagnaschi, was awarded a 1984 Emmy for technical contributions to editing.
Beginning in the 1980s, Francis suffered major personal losses: the murder of his youngest daughter; the sudden death of his wife and childhood sweetheart Teresa; and the untimely death of his son. In the 1990s, reorienting himself from these tragedies, Francis spent time traveling the world, and crossing the US several times in his beloved VW EuroVan camper. He was also able to see both Li Ping and his younger sister Li Zhong. In 2009, he settled in San Mateo, California.
In his later years, Francis suffered from both deafness and dementia. However his love of the English language and his sense of humor were still evident; he was still playing Scrabble in late December.
He is survived by his wife Ellen Li; his daughters Elizabeth Lee (David Goya) and Gloria Lee (Matthew Lynaugh); his grandsons Alex, Benjamin, Mason and Sam; his sister Li Zhong (Lei Tongshen); and family friend Angelique Agbigay. He was preceded in death by his parents, wife Teresa Jen Lee, sister Li Ping, daughter Roberta Lee and son Franklin Lee.
There are no events planned, as he did not wish to have services. He will be buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations honoring his life and legacy be directed to the Hertz Foundation.