Norman Manuel Abramson (April 1, 1932biography
from

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 operat ...

(1964) – December 1, 2020) was an American engineer and computer scientist, most known for developing the

ALOHAnet ALOHAnet, also known as the ALOHA System, or simply ALOHA, was a pioneering computer networking system developed at the University of Hawaii. ALOHAnet became operational in June 1971, providing the first public demonstration of a wireless packe ...

system for wireless computer communication.

Early life

Abramson was born on April 1, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts, to immigrant Jewish parents Edward and Esther. His father was born in Lithuania, and worked in commercial photography. His mother was born in Ukraine, and managed the house. He was schooled in the Boston public schools and attended Boston Latin School and the

English High School of Boston The English High School of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, is one of the first public high schools in America, founded in 1821. Originally called The English Classical School, it was renamed The English High School upon its first relocation ...

. He showed good aptitude in math and science, and he received an

A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(1953), an

M.A. A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(1955), and a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in electrical engineering from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(1958). His thesis at Stanford focused on the area of communication theory.

Career

Abramson was a research engineer at the Hughes Aircraft Company until 1955, when he joined the faculty at

(1955–65), was visiting professor at

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

(1966), before moving to

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

(1968–94), serving as

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of both Electrical Engineering and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

. Some of his early research concerned

radar signal characteristics A radar system uses a radio-frequency electromagnetic signal reflected from a target to determine information about that target. In any radar system, the signal transmitted and received will exhibit many of the characteristics described below. I ...

and sampling theory, as well as

frequency modulation Frequency modulation (FM) is the encoding of information in a carrier wave by varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. The technology is used in telecommunications, radio broadcasting, signal processing, and Run-length limited#FM: .280. ...

and

digital communication Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

channels,

error correcting codes In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is ...

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphi ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and computing for

seismic analysis Seismic analysis is a subset of structural analysis and is the calculation of the response of a building (or nonbuilding) structure to earthquakes. It is part of the process of structural design, earthquake engineering or structural assessment ...

. One of Abramson's first projects at the University of Hawaii was to develop radio technology to help the school send and receive data from its remote geographic location to the continental United States, funded by the

Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

. A key innovation in the technology was to divide the data in packets which could be resent if the data was lost during transmission, allowing for random access rather than sequential access, based on the same principles being developed for

ARPAnet The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...

, the precursor of the modern

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. The resulting radio network technology his team developed was deployed as

in 1971, based on the dual-meaning of the Hawaiian word " aloha". ALOHAnet became the foundation of modern

wireless communication Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most ...

as well as influencing the development of

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

-based communications. Abramson continued to serve as a professor at Hawaii until 1994 when he retired. Abramson went on to co-found Aloha Networks in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, where he served as a CTO.

Personal life and death

Abramson had two children with his wife, Joan: a son, Mark, and a daughter, Cairn; she predeceased him by six years. Abramson died on December 1, 2020 in his San Francisco home due to complications from skin cancer that had

metastasize Metastasis is a pathogenic agent's spread from an initial or primary site to a different or secondary site within the host's body; the term is typically used when referring to metastasis by a cancerous tumor. The newly pathological sites, then, ...

d to his lungs.

Awards

*1972: IEEE Sixth Region Achievement Award for contributions to Information Theory and Coding. *1980: IEEE Fellow Award for development of the ALOHA-System. *1992: Pacific Telecommunications Council 20th Anniversary Award for leadership in the PTC. *1995:

IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award The IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award is a Technical Field Award of the IEEE established in 1986. This award has been presented annually since 1988 for outstanding contributions to the integration of computers and commun ...

for development of the ALOHA System. *1998: Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the

IEEE Information Theory Society 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 ...

, for ''"the invention of the first random-access communication protocol"''. *2000: Technology Award from the German

Eduard Rhein Foundation The Eduard Rhein Foundation was founded in 1976 in Hamburg (Germany) by Eduard Rhein. The goal of the foundation is to promote scientific research, learning, arts, and culture. This is done in particular by granting awards for outstanding achievemen ...

. *2007:

IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal The IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal is an award honoring ''"exceptional contributions to communications and networking sciences and engineering"'' in the field of telecommunications. The medal is one of the highest honors awarded by the Instit ...

. *2011:

C&C Prize The NEC C&C Prize ( ja, C&C賞) is an award given by the NEC Corporation "in recognition of outstanding contributions to research and development and/or pioneering work in the fields of semiconductors, computers, telecommunications and their integr ...

Publications

*''Information theory and coding'' (

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes refere ...

, 1963) *''Computer communication networks'' ( Prentice-Hall, 1973). Editor with Franklin F. Kuo

References

External links

Engineering and Technology History Wiki

Oral history interview with Severo Ornstein

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota. Ornstein discusses the computing contributions of

Wesley Clark Wesley Kanne Clark (born December 23, 1944) is a retired United States Army officer. He graduated as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he obtained a degree ...

and Norman Abramson. *
Author profile
in the database

zbMATH zbMATH Open, formerly Zentralblatt MATH, is a major reviewing service providing reviews and abstracts for articles in pure and applied mathematics, produced by the Berlin office of FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastruct ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abramson, Norman 1932 births 2020 deaths American electrical engineers American information theorists Jewish American scientists Harvard College alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of Hawaiʻi faculty Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Writers from Boston Fellow Members of the IEEE Mathematicians from Massachusetts American chief technology officers Deaths from skin cancer Deaths from cancer in California