Gershenfeld

Gershenfeld is a surname of Ashkenazi Jewish origin. It is commonly understood as a compound of the Hebrew given name Gershon and the Germanic element feld, meaning field. The name reflects a pattern in Jewish-European surnames that blend a biblical name with a toponymic or descriptive element. Variants such as Gershfeld or Gershonfeld appear in historical records.

Notable individuals with the surname include Neil Gershenfeld (born 1952), an American physicist and engineer and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the founder and director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and is a leading advocate of digital fabrication through the Fab Lab movement. He authored Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop and other works on the future of making things, contributing to the global spread of community-accessible fabrication laboratories and related technologies.

Beyond these associations, Gershenfeld is primarily encountered as a family name rather than a geographic or institutional designation. The name is most often found in North America and Europe among people of Jewish descent, and it appears in genealogical and biographical sources rather than as a place or organization.