Andrew James Viterbi (born Andrea Giacomo Viterbi, March 9, 1935) is an American electrical engineer and businessman who co-founded Qualcomm Inc. and invented the Viterbi algorithm. He is the Presidential Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

Viterbi School of Engineering The USC Viterbi School of Engineering (formerly the USC School of Engineering) is the engineering school of the University of Southern California. It was renamed following a $52 million donation by Andrew J. Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm. ...

, which was named in his honor in 2004 in recognition of his $52 million gift.

Early life

Viterbi was born to Italian Jewish family in

Bergamo Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Como ...

, Italy and emigrated with them to the United States two years before World War II. His original name was Andrea, but when he was naturalized in the US, his parents anglicized it to Andrew.

Education

Viterbi attended the

Boston Latin School The Boston Latin School is a public exam school in Boston, Massachusetts. It was established on April 23, 1635, making it both the oldest public school in the British America and the oldest existing school in the United States. Its curriculum f ...

, and then entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1952, studying electrical engineering. He received both BS and MS in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 1957 from MIT. He was elected to membership in the honor society

Eta Kappa Nu Eta Kappa Nu () or IEEE-HKN is the international honor society of the Computer Science and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). "The organization promotes excellence in the profession and in education through an emphasis ...

in 1956 through the MIT chapter. He worked at Raytheon and later at

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. Its ...

, where he started working on

telemetry Telemetry is the in situ data collection, collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic data transmission, transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Gr ...

for unmanned space missions, also helping to develop the phase-locked loop. Simultaneously, he was carrying out a PhD study at the

, where he graduated in 1963 in digital communications.

Career

After receiving his PhD, he applied successfully for an academic position at

University of California, Los Angeles 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 ...

(UCLA). Viterbi was later a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA and

UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

. In 1967 he proposed the Viterbi algorithm to decode convolutionally encoded data. It is still used widely in cellular phones for

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 ...

, as well as for

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the m ...

DNA analysis Genetic testing, also known as DNA testing, is used to identify changes in DNA sequence or chromosome structure. Genetic testing can also include measuring the results of genetic changes, such as RNA analysis as an output of gene expression, or ...

, and many other applications of

Hidden Markov model A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process — call it X — with unobservable ("''hidden''") states. As part of the definition, HMM requires that there be an ob ...

s. On advice of a lawyer, Viterbi did not patent the algorithm. Viterbi also helped to develop the CDMA standard for cell phone networks. Viterbi was the cofounder of

Linkabit Corporation Linkabit was a technology company founded in 1968 by Irwin M. Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi and Leonard Kleinrock. Linkabit alumni have created a large number of technology companies, most notably, Qualcomm. Linkabit is now a division of L3Harris Technol ...

, with

Irwin M. Jacobs Irwin Mark Jacobs (born October 18, 1933) is an American electrical engineer and businessman. He is a co-founder and former chairman of Qualcomm, and chair of the board of trustees of the Salk Institute. As of 2019, Jacobs has an estimated net ...

in 1968, a small telecommunications contractor. He was also the co-founder of Qualcomm Inc. with Jacobs in 1985. , he is the president of the venture capital company The Viterbi Group. He continues to be involved in wireless communications technology companies as a strategic advisor to Ingenu's board of directors. Virterbi was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1978. USC-Viterbi School of Engineering

In 1998 he was one of the few receiving a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society. Viterbi earned it for ''"the invention of the Viterbi algorithm"''. In 2002, Viterbi dedicated the Andrew Viterbi '52 Computer Center at his alma mater, Boston Latin School. On March 2, 2004, the

School of Engineering was renamed the

in his honor, following his $52 million donation to the school. He is a member of the USC board of trustees.Board of Trustees
, University of Southern California, Retrieveded 2008-04-13. He is also on the Board of Trustees at

The Scripps Research Institute Scripps Research, previously known as The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institu ...

. He is also founding member of ISSNAF (The Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation). In 2005, he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering. In 2006, he was made an Eminent Member of

. Viterbi and

received the 2007 IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Award, for "fundamental contributions, innovation, and leadership that enabled the growth of wireless telecommunications". In 2008, he was named a

Millennium Technology Prize The Millennium Technology Prize ( fi, Millennium-teknologiapalkinto) is one of the world's largest technology prizes. It is awarded once every two years by Technology Academy Finland, an independent foundation established by Finnish industries, ...

finalist for the invention of the Viterbi algorithm. At the award ceremony in Finland on June 11, 2008, he was awarded a prize of EUR 115,000 and the prize trophy "Peak" as a 2008 Millennium Technology Laureate. In September 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Science for developing "the 'Viterbi algorithm', and for his contributions to Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless technology that transformed the theory and practice of digital communications". In 2010, he received the

IEEE Medal of Honor The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contribution ...

and in the same year he also received the IIC Lifetime Achievement Award by the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. In 2011, he received the

John Fritz Medal The John Fritz Medal has been awarded annually since 1902 by the American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) for "outstanding scientific or industrial achievements". The medal was created for the 80th birthday of John Fritz, who lived betw ...

from the

American Association of Engineering Societies The American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES) is an umbrella organization of engineering societies in the US, founded by a group of 43 societies in 1979. After several disputes, and a change in focus in the mid-1980s from speaking for t ...

. In 2013, Viterbi was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2017, Viterbi, along with Irwin Jacobs, received the IEEE Milestone Award for their CDMA and spread spectrum development that drives the mobile industry.

Personal life

Viterbi was married to Erna Finci (1934–2015), who was a Jewish refugee from

Sarajevo Sarajevo ( ; cyrl, Сарајево, ; ''see Names of European cities in different languages (Q–T)#S, names in other languages'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 275,524 in its a ...

in the former Yugoslavia. Erna was a Shoah survivor. In 1941, during World War II, the Finci family fled German-occupied Yugoslavia for the Italian-occupied zone from which they were deported and interned in the Parma region of Italy. In 1943, when the Nazis occupied Italy, the family was saved from deportation to extermination camps by the people of Gramignazzo di Sissa, the village where they had been interned; they were cared by the local Ponghellini family, who hid them in their vineyard when German forces advanced into Italy. Other Italians helped them escape to

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, walking across the Alps, where they waited out the war. They had three children, Alan Viterbi, Audrey Viterbi, and Alexander Viterbi (who died in 2011 at age 40).

References

External links

IEEE History Center InterviewThe Quiet Genius
Trudy E. Bell (PDF)
Fleeing Fascism: Andrew Viterbi Remembers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Viterbi, Andrew 1935 births Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Living people American computer scientists American philanthropists 21st-century American engineers American telecommunications industry businesspeople Italian emigrants to the United States MIT School of Engineering alumni University of Southern California alumni Boston Latin School alumni Draper Prize winners Scripps Research Qualcomm people Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering IEEE Medal of Honor recipients