Aaron D. Wyner (March 17, 1939 – September 29, 1997) was an American information theorist noted for his contributions in coding theory, particularly the Gaussian channel. He lived in

South Orange, New Jersey South Orange, officially the Township of South Orange Village, is a suburban township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village's population was 16,198, reflecting a decline of 766 (4.5%) fro ...

.Burkhart, Ford
"Aaron D. Wyner, 58; Helped Speed Data Around the Globe"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', October 13, 1997. Accessed November 9, 2007. Wyner was born in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. In 1955, he graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, and in 1960 completed a five-year joint engineering program with

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

of the

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. In 1963 he received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from

for a thesis that worked out the algebra for

convolutional code In telecommunication, a convolutional code is a type of error-correcting code that generates parity symbols via the sliding application of a boolean polynomial function to a data stream. The sliding application represents the 'convolution' of the ...

s.Slepian, David
"Memorial Tributes: National Academy of Engineering, Volume 9"
National Academy of Engineering, 2001. Accessed November 9, 2007. After a summer job at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Wyner joined

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

at Murray Hill, New Jersey, as a member of the technical staff. In 1974 he became head of its Communications Analysis Research Department and led it until 1993, when he became a researcher in the information theory department. His research included coding theory, optical communications,

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

, and

stochastic process In probability theory and related fields, a stochastic () or random process is a mathematical object usually defined as a family of random variables. Stochastic processes are widely used as mathematical models of systems and phenomena that appea ...

. In a 1975 paper, he introduced the "wire-tap channel", showing how one could obtain "perfect secrecy" when a receiver enjoys a better channel than does the wire-tapping opponent. Wyner was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Fellow, and received all the IEEE Information Theory Society awards, i.e., the

Claude E. Shannon Award The Claude E. Shannon Award of the IEEE Information Theory Society was created to honor consistent and profound contributions to the field of information theory. Each Shannon Award winner is expected to present a Shannon Lecture at the following ...

, Prize Paper Award, and designation as Shannon Lecturer.

References

;Sources
National Academy of Engineering memorial tribute

* ttp://backup.itsoc.org/publications/nltr/97_dec/orb.html ITSOC obituary {{DEFAULTSORT:Wyner, Aaron D. 1939 births Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni American information theorists Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering People from South Orange, New Jersey Scientists at Bell Labs 1997 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians Mathematicians from New York (state) Scientists from the Bronx