Thomas M. Cover �koʊvər(August 7, 1938 – March 26, 2012) was an American information theorist and professor jointly in the Departments of

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 ...

and

Statistics Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, indust ...

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 conside ...

. He devoted almost his entire career to developing the relationship between information theory and statistics.

Early life and education

He received his B.S. in Physics from

MIT 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 m ...

in 1960 and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from

in 1964.

Career

Cover was President of 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 ...

and was a Fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...

and of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 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 ...

. He received the Outstanding Paper Award in Information Theory for his 1972 paper "Broadcast Channels"; he was selected in 1990 as the Shannon Lecturer, regarded as the highest honor in information theory; in 1997 he received the

IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal is presented annually to up to three persons, for outstanding achievements in information sciences, information systems and information technology. The recipients receive a gold medal, together with a replica ...

; and in 2003 he was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

. During his 48-year career as a professor of Electrical Engineering and Statistics at Stanford University, he graduated 64 PhD students, authored over 120 journal papers in learning, information theory, statistical complexity, pattern recognition, and

portfolio theory Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. It is a formalization and extension of diversificati ...

; and he partnered with

Joy A. Thomas Joy Aloysius Thomas (1 January 1963 – 28 September 2020) was an Indian-born American information theorist, author and a Senior Data scientist at Google. He was known for his contributions to information theory and was the co-author of ''Ele ...

to coauthor the book ''Elements of Information Theory'', which has become the most widely used textbook as an introduction to the topic since the publication of its first edition in 1991. He was also coeditor of the book ''Open Problems in Communication and Computation''.

Selected works

* * * Van Campenhout, Jan. and Cover, T. (1981).
Maximum entropy and conditional probability
'. Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on * Cover, T. (1974).
The Best Two Independent Measurements Are Not the Two Best
'. Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on * Cover, T. and Hart, P. (1967).
Nearest neighbor pattern classification''.
Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on. * Cover, T. (1965).
Geometrical and Statistical Properties of Systems of Linear Inequalities with Applications in Pattern Recognition
'. Electronic Computers, IEEE Transactions on

References

External links

Thomas M. Cover Stanford University homepage
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cover, Thomas M. 1938 births 2012 deaths American statisticians Fellow Members of the IEEE Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering People from San Bernardino, California Probability theorists Stanford University School of Engineering alumni Stanford University School of Engineering faculty

Early life and education

Career

Selected works

See also

References

External links