Shlomo Karni was born in 1932 in Lodz, Poland. In 1936, his parents and he moved to Israel (Palestine at the time). In 1956, he graduated from the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, with a B.S. (magna cum laude) degree; in 1957, a Master's degree from Yale University, and in 1960 a PhD degree from the Univ. of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign -- all in Electrical Engineering. At the University of Illinois, he met and married his wife, Michaela.
In 1961, he joined the faculty of UNM in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, from which he retired in 1999 as the Gardner-Zemke Professor. From 1972 to 1999, he was also a professor in the department of Religious Studies at UNM.
Other academic and professional appointments include: The Univ. of Hawaii; the Technion (his alma mater); Tel Aviv University, where he was the founding dean of the school of engineering; the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem, Israel; Los Alamos National Laboratories; the Air Force Weapons Lab at Kirtland AFB.
He is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. His publications include 6 textbooks in Electrical Engineering and mathematics (one of which was pirated and published in Russian by the USSR), over 120 professional articles and conference papers, and a Dictionary of Basic Biblical Hebrew/English.
Shlomo Karni has been a pillar of the Jewish community in Albuquerque since his arrival here in 1961. He founded two Jewish institutions that are still flourishing 50 years later. In 1971, Shlomo recognised the need for a vehicle to communicate Jewish community news and began The Link, then a monthly printed bulletin. Shlomo served as editor of The Link until 1975.
In 1973, Shlomo, his wife Michaela, and several other families founded Chavurat Hamidbar, a traditional-egalitarian lay-led chavurah that is thriving today and will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. Shlomo has shared his encyclopedic knowledge of Hebrew, Judaism, Torah, Talmud, and Jewish history not only by teaching religious studies at UNM, but by generously volunteering to teach classes and lectures and tutor students for OASIS, the JCC, Taste of Honey, Chavurat Hamidbar and elsewhere. Shlomo is a dedicated, generous, extremely knowledgeable, and respected service and prayer leader, Torah reader, biblical scholar, and teacher.
He is a recipient of the 2022 Harold B. Albert Jewish Community Service Award.
