Ted Harris was born January 11, 1919, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up in Dallas, Texas, attended Southern Methodist University for two years and completed his undergraduate studies and some graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin. During World War II he served as a weather officer in England in the Army Air Force. He received his Ph.D. in 1947 from Princeton under Sam Wilks. From 1947 to 1966 he was a member of the mathematics department at The Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California; he headed the department from 1959 to 1965. From 1966 to 1989 he was Professor of Mathematics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Since 1989 he has been Professor Emeritus and Lecturer. In 1988 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1989 he received an honorary doctorate from Chalmers Institute of Technology, Sweden. He received an Albert S. Raubenheimer Distinguished Faculty Award in 1985 and a Distinguished Emeritus Award in 1990 from USC.