He met his future wife Thelma Austern in 1941 at City College, New York and they were married when he was 20 and she was 17.

This led to an invitation from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel to direct the WEIZAC Project.

[4] Estrin obtained a teaching position at UCLA in 1953 and they moved to Los Angeles.

After their return from the WEIZAC project, Thelma also began working at UCLA in 1960 and she became a professor in the Computer Science Department in 1980.

Gerald Estrin served as Chairperson of the UCLA Computer Science Department from 1979 to 1982 and from 1985 to 1988.