John Gustav Daugman (February 17, 1954 – June 11, 2024) was a British-American

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

computer vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

and

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the task of assigning a class to an observation based on patterns extracted from data. While similar, pattern recognition (PR) is not to be confused with pattern machines (PM) which may possess PR capabilities but their p ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. His major research contributions have been in computational neuroscience, pattern recognition, and in computer vision with the original development of wavelet methods for image encoding and analysis. He invented the IrisCode, a 2D Gabor wavelet-based

iris recognition Iris recognition is an automated method of biometrics, biometric identification that uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques on video images of one or both of the iris (anatomy), irises of an individual's Human eye, eyes, whose complex ...

algorithm that is the basis of all publicly deployed automatic iris recognition systems and which has registered more than 1.5 billion persons worldwide in government ID programs.

Education and early life

The son of émigrés Josef Petros Daugmanis from Latvia and Runa Inge Olsson from Sweden, John Daugman was educated in America, receiving an A.B. degree and a Ph.D. degree (1983) from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Career and research

Following his PhD, Daugman held a post-doctoral fellowship, then taught at Harvard for five years. After short appointments in Germany and Japan, he joined the

in England to research and to teach computer vision, neural computing, information theory, and pattern recognition. He held the Johann Bernoulli Chair of Mathematics and Informatics at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen, Netherlands. Founded in 1614, th ...

the Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, and the Toshiba Endowed Chair at the

Tokyo Institute of Technology The Tokyo Institute of Technology () was a public university in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan. It merged with Tokyo Medical and Dental University to form the Institute of Science Tokyo on 1 October 2024. The Tokyo Institute of Technology was a De ...

in Japan before becoming Professor at Cambridge.

Iris recognition algorithm

Daugman filed for a patent for his

algorithm in 1991 while working at the University of Cambridge. The algorithm was first commercialized in the late 1990s. His algorithm automatically recognizes persons in real-time by encoding the random patterns visible in the iris of the eye from some distance, and applying a powerful test of statistical independence. It is used in many identification applications such as the Unique IDentification Authority of India (

UIDAI Aadhaar (Hindi: आधार, ) is a twelve-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by all residents of India, based on their biometrics and demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification Authority o ...

) for registering all 1.3 billion citizens of India for government services and entitlements, border crossing controls in

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

and passport-free immigration in the UK,

, United States, Canada, and other countries. Daugman's algorithm uses a 2D Gabor wavelet transform to extract the phase structure of the iris. This is encoded into a very compact bit stream, the IrisCode, that is stored in a database for identification at search speeds of millions of iris patterns per second per single

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

core.

Awards and honours

Daugman has received several awards, including: * Presidential Young Investigator Award from the US

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

* Information Technology Award and Medal from the

British Computer Society image:Maurice Vincent Wilkes 1980 (3).jpg, Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957. The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned ...

* "Millennium Product" Award from the UK Design Council * "Time 100" Innovators Award *

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

, Order of the British Empire, from Queen Elizabeth II * Fellow of the

Institute of Mathematics and its Applications The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) is the UK's chartered professional body for mathematicians and one of the UK's learned societies for mathematics (another being the London Mathematical Society). The IMA aims to advance ...

(FIMA) (2011) * Fellow of the

International Association for Pattern Recognition The International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), is an international association of organizations dedicated to computer vision or pattern recognition. It only admits one organization per country or territory. Individual people partic ...

(FIAPR) (2012) * Fellow of the US

National Academy of Inventors The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) is a US non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging inventors in academia, following the model of the National Academies of the United States. It was founded at the University of South Florida in 201 ...

(FNAI) (2015) * Fellow of the

(

FBCS Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957. The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in ...

) and CEng (2015) * Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

(

FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK and from arou ...

) (2015) * Inducted into the US

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a US patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also operate ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Daugman, John Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Living people 1954 births Academic staff of Tokyo Institute of Technology Harvard University alumni Officers of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the International Association for Pattern Recognition Fellows of the British Computer Society Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellows of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications Iris recognition