Eliezer A. Trachtenberg, born in 1946 in Tula, Russia, grew up in Kishinev, Moldavia, in the former USSR. He holds an MS degree in control systems from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute and a DSc in applied mathematics and computer engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. He is presently a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Being interested in the humanities from an early age, he started his systematic studies in Judaism as a member of the underground Zionist organization in Leningrad. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment for Zionist activities and classed as an especially dangerous state criminal at the Kishinev trial in 1971; at the same time he was honored with the title of Prisoner of Zion in the State of Israel. He has three children, many grandchildren, and currently lives with his wife in a suburb of Philadelphia.