Professor Jin Au Kong was born on Dec. 27, 1942, in Jiangsu, China. He received a BS in 1962 from the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, and an MS in 1965 from the National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. He obtained his PhD in electrical engineering from Syracuse University, New York, in 1968. Dr. Kong joined the MIT faculty in 1969. As Professor of Electrical Engineering since 1980, he led the MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE) Center for Electromagnetic Theory and Applications. He supervised well over 150 students toward completion of their graduate theses in EECS. Since 2003, he set up a branch of The Electromagnetics Academy at Zhejiang University, led a research group and had devoted numerous efforts over there.

Prof. Kong was the founder and president of The Electromagnetics Academy, primary organizer of PIERS. He was also editor-in-chief for the Wiley series on remote sensing, the founding editor-in-chief of Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications (JEMWA), and Progress In Electromagnetics Research (PIER) Journals. Among his numerous awards are the Pan Wen Yuan outstanding research award, S. T. Li Prize, Distinguished Achievement Award from the IEEE GRSS for year 2000 and the IEEE Electromagnetics Award (2004). A Fellow of IEEE and the Optical Society of America, he published more than 30 books on electromagnetics and more than 700 research papers and book chapters.

His most important publication is book of Electromagnetic Wave Theory, in which great emphasis is placed on the fundamental importance of the k vector in electromagnetic wave theory. This book has been used in several undergraduate and graduate courses that he had been teaching at the MIT. Prof. Kong's EM Classes were very popular both in MIT and CHINA.

Prof. Kong was unusually devoted to the generations of students who learned and conducted research in his laboratories. In 1993, in a faculty profile interview in "RLE Currents," he was asked what advice he had for MIT students interested in electromagnetism. "You must be able to think on your feet. No one knows better than you about the problem you're working on," he answered. "Most important of all, do not restrict yourself to a narrow topic. Be prepared and open-minded in making contributions to seemingly unrelated topics. Crossfertilization is an intellectually rewarding exercise."

Professor Kong was awarded the Honorary Doctor Degree (Docteur Honoris Causa) by the University of Nantes, October 13, 2006 and awarded the Honorary Doctor Degree (Docteur Honoris Causa) by the University of Paris X, October 18, 2006. He is listed in American Men of Science (1969), Notable Americans of the Bicentennial Era (1976), International Who's Who in Education (1980), Who's Who in the World (1985), and Who's Who in America (1986).