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Irving S. Reed

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Irving Stoy Reed
BornNovember 12, 1923
Seattle, Washington,U.S.
DiedSeptember 11, 2012(2012-09-11)(aged 88)
Alma materCalifornia Institute of Technology
Known forReed–Solomon code,Reed–Muller code
AwardsClaude E. Shannon Award(1982)
IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal(1989)
Scientific career
FieldsInformation theory,Coding theory

Irving Stoy Reed(November 12, 1923 – September 11, 2012)[1][2]was an Americanmathematicianandengineer.He is best known for co-inventing a class of algebraicerror-correcting and error-detecting codesknown asReed–Solomon codesin collaboration withGustave Solomon.He also co-invented theReed–Muller code.

Reed made many contributions to areas ofelectrical engineeringincludingradar,signal processing,andimage processing.He was part of the team that built theMADDIDA,guidance system forNorthrop'sSnarkcruise missile – one of the first digital computers. He developed and introduced the now-standardRegister Transfer Languageto the computer community while at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology'sLincoln Laboratory.He was a faculty member of the Electrical Engineering-Systems Department of theUniversity of Southern Californiafrom 1962 to 1993.

Reed was a member of theNational Academy of Engineering(1979)[3]and a Fellow of theIEEE(1973),[2]a winner of theClaude E. Shannon Award,theIEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award,theIEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal(1989)[4]and withGustave Solomon,the 1995IEEE Masaru Ibuka Award.In 1998 Reed received a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from theIEEE Information Theory Society.[5]

Anecdotes

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TheUniversity of Southern Californiagraduate school of electrical engineering required doctoral students to pass an oral screening exam, in which there were eight categories of test questions. Reed always asked the questions aboutelectromagnetismand specificallyMaxwell's equations,which he obviously viewed as fundamental tocommunication theory.

While a student in mathematics at theCalifornia Institute of Technology,Reed did not complete his required physical education courses due to time pressure and was set to enter the Navy. The only way he could graduate was to obtain a special release fromRobert A. Millikan,the university's president and a former physical education instructor as well as aNobel Prizewinner and a noted hard-liner on the physical education requirement. As Reed was in Millikan's office pleading his case, he saw reprints of two papers he had published as an undergraduate on the president's table and drew them to Millikan's attention. Millikan smiled and said "You seem to me a healthy young man. I believe you will do well in the service of your country as a graduate of the California Institute of Technology."

Reed and colleagues demonstrated theMADDIDAcomputer toJohn von Neumannat theInstitute for Advanced StudyinPrinceton, New Jersey.The problem set for MADDIDA was computation of a mathematical function. Von Neumann, a noted lightning calculator, kept up with the computer and checked its results with a paper and pencil.

See also

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References

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  1. ^"USC - Viterbi School of Engineering - in Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Irving S. Reed, 88".
  2. ^abWang, Lung-Jen; Hsieh, Wen-Shyong; Truong, Trieu-Kien; Reed, Irving S.; Cheng, T. C. (2001). "A fast efficient computation of cubic-spline interpolation in image codec".IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.49(6): 1189–1197.Bibcode:2001ITSP...49.1189W.doi:10.1109/78.923301.
  3. ^"NAE Members Directory – Dr. Irving S. Reed".NAE.RetrievedJune 2,2011.
  4. ^"IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients"(PDF).IEEE.RetrievedMay 29,2011.
  5. ^"Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation".IEEE Information Theory Society.RetrievedJuly 14,2011.
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