Wilbur B. Davenport Jr. (July 27, 1920 – August 28, 2003) was an American engineer and scientist, known for his work on communications systems.

Early life

Davenport was born in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

and earned his bachelor's degree from

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a public land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama. With more than 24,600 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of more than 30,000 with 1,330 faculty members, Auburn is the second largest uni ...

in 1941 where he was a member of

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fraternity. He received his master's degree in 1943 from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) and then served from 1943 to 1946 in the

U.S. Naval Reserve The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2005, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called Reservists, are categorized as being in either the Se ...

as a

lieutenant (junior grade) Lieutenant junior grade is a junior commissioned officer rank used in a number of navies. United States Lieutenant (junior grade), commonly abbreviated as LTJG or, historically, Lt. (j.g.) (as well as variants of both abbreviations), is ...

. He returned to MIT and earned his Ph.D. in 1950, just after being named an assistant professor at the institute in 1949.

Career

He became a full professor from 1960 to 1982. From 1951 he worked with

Lincoln Lab The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and de ...

as leader of the research group on

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

s technology. In 1961 he was appointed associate head of the Research Laboratory of Electronics before returning to the Lincoln Lab in 1963. While at the RLE he worked on the spread spectrum techniques on secure communications. In 1974 he was appointed to head MIT's Electrical Engineering Department. While serving as department head he oversaw a curriculum change for computer students and a department name change to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He stepped down from the position after four years. During this time he was a director for the GenRad Corporation from 1974 to 1982. After retiring from M.I.T. he moved to

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island o ...

and became a visiting professor of electrical engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa until 1987. He moved to Sunriver, Oregon in that year.

Publications and awards

In 1952 the Journal of Applied Physics published a paper he co-authored titled ''Statistical Errors in Measurements on Random Time Functions''. This was the first of several papers on statistical theory. In the early 1960s the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America published his paper ''An Experimental Study of Speech-Wave Probability Distribution''. His published books included ''Probability and Random Processes'' (1975) and ''An Introduction to the Theory of Random Signals and Noise'' with William L. Root (1958). Davenport was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (1975) and received the IEEE Pioneer Award (1981) for his spread spectrum research with

Paul E. Green Paul E. Green (4 April 1927 – 21 September 2012)) was a US marketing professor and statistician. He was S.S. Kresge Professor of Marketing, and later Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He was the founder of c ...

, Mortimer Rogoff and Louis A. deRosa. Prof. Davenport's doctoral adviser was Prof.

Robert Fano Roberto Mario "Robert" Fano (11 November 1917 – 13 July 2016) was an Italian-American computer scientist and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He became a student and working ...

.W.B. Davenport Jr., "A Study of Speech Probability Distributions", Technical Report (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics); 148. Aug. 25, 1950.
/ref> His notable students: Prof. Victor On-Kwok Li and

George L. Turin George Lewis Turin (born 27 January 1930) was an American computer scientist. From 1983 to 1986, Turin was the Dean of UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.1920 births 2003 deaths Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni MIT Lincoln Laboratory people American scientists Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering United States Navy reservists United States Navy officers United States Navy personnel of World War II {{US-scientist-stub