Kornelis Antonie "Kees" Schouhamer Immink (born 18 December 1946) is a Dutch engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, who pioneered and advanced the era of digital audio, video, and data recording, including popular digital media such as

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

(CD),

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

and

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

disc.National Academy of Engineering
He has been a prolific and influential engineer, who holds more than 1100 U.S. and international patents. A large portion of the commonly used audio and video playback and recording devices use technologies based on his work. His contributions to coding systems assisted the digital video and audio revolution, by enabling reliable data storage at information densities previously unattainable. Immink received several tributes that summarize the impact of his contributions to the digital audio and video revolution. Among the accolades received are the

IEEE Medal of Honor The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, and is presented to an individual or team of up to three who have made exceptional contri ...

"for pioneering contributions to video, audio, and data recording technology, including compact disc, DVD, and Blu-ray", the

Edison Medal The IEEE Edison Medal is presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering, or the electrical arts." It is the oldest medal in this fi ...

and an individual Technology Emmy award by the

National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), also known as the National Television Academy until 2007, is an American professional service organization founded in 1955 for "the advancement of the arts and sciences of televisio ...

(NATAS).

Beatrix Beatrix is a Latin feminine given name, most likely derived from ''Viatrix'', a feminine form of the Late Latin name ''Viator'' which meant "voyager, traveller" and later influenced in spelling by association with the Latin word ''beatus'' or "ble ...

Queen Queen most commonly refers to: * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a kingdom * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen (band), a British rock band Queen or QUEEN may also refer to: Monarchy * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Q ...

of 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 ...

bestowed him a knighthood in 2000. He was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

in 2007 for pioneering and advancing the era of digital audio, video, and data recording. Royal Holland Society of Arts and Sciences introduced the Kees Schouhamer Immink Prize in 2019 as a means to encourage research on information science and tele-communications. Currently, Immink holds the position of president of Turing Machines Inc, which was founded in 1998. During his career, Immink, in addition to his practical contributions, has contributed to

information theory Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...

. He has written over 120 articles and four books, including ''Codes for Mass Data Storage Media''. He has been an adjunct professor at the Institute for Experimental Mathematics, University of Duisburg and Essen,

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, since 1994, as well as affiliated with the

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national university, national Public university, public research university in Singapore. It was officially established in 1980 by the merging of the University of Singapore and Nanyang University ...

(NUS) and

Singapore University of Technology and Design The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) is a public university, public autonomous university in Singapore. History The founding president is Thomas L. Magnanti, who is a professor associated with the Massachusetts Institu ...

(SUTD) as a visiting professor.

Education

Immink obtained an

Engineer's degree An engineer's degree is an advanced academic degree in engineering which is conferred in Europe, some countries of Asia and Latin America, North Africa and a few institutions in the United States. The degree may require a thesis but always require ...

(Ir.) in

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

(1974, cum laude) and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

degree (1985) from

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology (), Abbreviation, abbr. TU/e, is a public university, public technical university in the Netherlands, situated in Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its Bachelor of Science, BS ...

on a

thesis A thesis (: theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: D ...

entitled ''Properties and Constructions of Binary Channel Codes''.

Early years at Philips Research

Fresh from engineering school, in 1967, he joined

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

Research Labs in

Eindhoven Eindhoven ( ; ) is a city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, located in the southern Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant, of which it is the largest municipality, and is also locat ...

, where he spent thirty years in a fruitful association. The renowned physicist

Hendrik Casimir Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir (15 July 1909 – 4 May 2000) was a Dutch physicist who made significant contributions to the field of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He is best known for his work on the Casimir effect, which descr ...

was director of Philips Research till 1972. Immink described the atmosphere at that time: "We were able to conduct whatever research we found relevant, and had no pre-determined tasks; instead, we received full freedom and support of autonomous research. We went to work, not knowing that we would do that day. This view – or rather ambiguous view – on how research should be conducted, led to amazing inventions as a result. It was an innovation heaven". Immink worked in various groups, and in 1974, he joined the research group ''Optics'', where pioneering work was done on optical

laserdisc LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. It was developed by Philips, Pioneer Corporation, Pioneer, and the movie studio MCA Inc., MCA. The format was initially marketed in the United State ...

systems. He contributed mainly to the

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

and servo technology of the video disc. In a joint effort, MCA and Philips brought the laserdisc system to the market. Laserdisc was first available in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

in 1978, two years after the

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

and four years before the CD. The Laserdisc never managed a significant presence in market share. The Philips/MCA Laserdisc operation was not successful and discontinued in 1981.

Compact Disc

Around 1976, Philips and Sony showed prototypes of digital audio disc players, which were based on optical

videodisc Videodisc (or video disc) is a general term for a laser- or stylus-readable random-access disc that contains both audio and analog video signals recorded in an analog form. Typically, it is a reference to any such media that predates the mainstr ...

technology. In the interview by Tekla Perry for the

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...

, May 2017, Immink explains that he got involved in the CD project at the end of 1979 when Sony and Philips had decided to jointly settle on one design. Both Philips and Sony had shown prototype CD players to the press in 1978. The team at Philips, he says, "needed someone to do measurements of the two competing systems, the quality, how they coped with scratches, how they coped with imperfections of the disc. My job with the

LaserDisc LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. It was developed by Philips, Pioneer Corporation, Pioneer, and the movie studio MCA Inc., MCA. The format was initially marketed in the United State ...

was finished, so I said, 'Sure, I could do it.'" Both Philips and Sony had come up with different rules for translating digital audio data to sequences of pits and lands. After a lot of experimentation, Immink improved the playing time by thirty percent by inventing a code that could better cope with the servo systems. The encoding system Immink devised came to be called eight-to-fourteen modulation (EFM). Immink took part in the joint

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

–

task force, which developed the

Compact Disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

standard, the Red Book. He contributed to the EFM and

CIRC Circ or CIRC may refer to: * Čirč, a village and municipality in northern Slovakia * Circ (duo), an American music duo * Cook Islands Round Cup, top division association football league in the Cook Islands Commercial * China Insurance Regulato ...

coding schemes. In the article, "Shannon, Beethoven, and the Compact Disc", Immink presents a historical review of the years leading up to the launch of the CD, and the various crucial decisions made. He refutes the urban legend that the compact disc's diameter was increased from 115 to 120 mm solely to hold the 74 minutes playing time of

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

's Ninth Symphony conducted by

Wilhelm Furtwängler Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler ( , ; ; 25 January 188630 November 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest Symphony, symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a majo ...

. Commercial disputes also played a part. After the CD standard was set in 1980, Immink and his co-workers conducted pioneering experiments with magneto-optical audio recording on pre-grooved discs. They also found a simple method to extend the analog

standard with digital sound. The new systems were brought to market as

MiniDisc MiniDisc (MD) is an erasable magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74, or 80 minutes of digitized audio. Sony announced the MiniDisc in September 1992 and released it in November of that year for sale i ...

and

CD Video CD Video (also known as CDV, CD-V, or CD+V) was a format of Optical disc, optical media disc that was introduced in 1987 that combines the technologies of standard compact disc and LaserDisc. CD-V discs are the same size as a standard audio CD, ...

Laserdisc LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. It was developed by Philips, Pioneer Corporation, Pioneer, and the movie studio MCA Inc., MCA. The format was initially marketed in the United State ...

s fabricated after 1984 have digitally encoded sound signals.

DVD and Blu-ray Disc

In 1993,

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

engineers developed the

Super Density Disc The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

, the successor of the

. Immink was a member of the

and

task force, which developed a competing disc format, called MultiMedia CD. Immink created EFMPlus, a more efficient successor of EFM used in CD. The electronics industry feared a repeat of the format war between

and

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, and stylized as the Greek letter Beta, β in its logo) is a discontinued consumer analog Videotape, video cassette recording format developed by Sony. It was one of the main competitors in the videotape format war ag ...

in the 1980s. IBM's president,

Lou Gerstner Louis Vincent Gerstner Jr. (born March 1, 1942) is an American businessman, best known for his tenure as chairman and chief executive officer of IBM from April 1993 until 2002, when he retired as CEO in March and chairman in December. He is lar ...

, urged them to adopt Immink's EFMPlus coding scheme as EFM has a proven record.Blu-ray vs HD DVD: State of the Division.
/ref> In September 1995, an agreement was made among the major industries: Philips/Sony surrendered to Toshiba's SuperDensity Disc and Toshiba accepted the EFMPlus modulation. The DVD encompasses the sound-only

Super Audio CD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the compact disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows multiple a ...

(SACD) and

DVD-audio DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio uses most of the storage on the disc for high-quality audio and is not intended to be a video delivery format. The ...

formats, developed independently by

and

, which are incompatible formats for delivering very

high-fidelity High fidelity (hi-fi or, rarely, HiFi) is the high-quality reproduction of sound. It is popular with audiophiles and home audio enthusiasts. Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat (neutral, uncolored) f ...

audio content. SACD is in a

format war A format war is a competition between similar but mutually incompatible technical standards that compete for the same market, such as for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political an ...

with

DVD-Audio DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio uses most of the storage on the disc for high-quality audio and is not intended to be a video delivery format. The ...

, but neither has yet managed to replace audio CDs. Immediately after the DVD standard was settled in 1996, Philips and Sony, disappointed after the DVD failure, decided to develop a next-generation blue-

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

-based

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canadian and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SS ...

(DVR), which would be positioned as DVD's high-density successor. Philips and Sony set up a joint task force, where Immink and his co-workers developed DVRs, later called

's, code design. In 2005, seven years after its design, the Blu-ray Disc was brought to market. In 2002, the

DVD forum The DVD Forum (initially DVD Consortium) was an industry consortium for DVD specifications from 1995 to 2025. History The founding companies were Hitachi, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, Thomson, Warner Bros, Toshiba, JVC, ...

adopted an alternative format, the

HD DVD HD DVD (short for High Density Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video.

. The two resulting standards had significant differences that made each incompatible with the other. The blue-laser

with Toshiba's

HD DVD HD DVD (short for High Density Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video.

was settled in early 2008 when Toshiba withdrew their system effectively ending the

high definition optical disc format war The high-definition optical disc format war was a market competition between two optical disc standards for distributing high-definition video: Blu-ray Disc, backed by Sony, and HD DVD, backed by Toshiba. The conflict lasted from 2006 to 200 ...

DV and DCC

In 1985, Immink joined Philips's

magnetic recording Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is ...

group, where he contributed to the design of coding technologies of the digital video tape recorder, DVList of Winners SMPTE Progress Medal.
/ref> and the

Digital Compact Cassette Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) is a magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita Electric in late 1992 and marketed as the successor to the standard analog Compact Cassette. It was also a direct competitor to Son ...

(DCC). The DCC was short-lived: introduced in 1992 and discontinued in 1996. The DV, launched in 1994, has become a popular tape standard for home and semi-professional video production.

Turing Machines

In 1994, Immink was named a Philips' Research Fellow, the company’s pre-eminent technical distinction. He left

Philips Research The Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (English translation: ''Philips Physics Laboratory'') or NatLab was the Dutch section of the Philips research department, which did research for the product divisions of that company. In 1975, the NatLab em ...

in 1998 after 30 years of service, and founded Turing Machines Inc., where he currently serves as its president. The small research institute has been successful in creating new coding technology and has been granted around ten US patents after a joint cooperation with the Korean electronics company LG.

Service to engineering society

Immink has served in officer and board positions for a number of technical societies, government and academic organizations, including the

Audio Engineering Society The Audio Engineering Society (AES) is a professional body for engineers, scientists, other individuals with an interest or involvement in the professional audio industry. The membership largely comprises engineers developing devices or product ...

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded by Charles Francis Jenkins in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and e ...

, and several universities. He is a trustee of the Shannon Foundation, and was a governor of the IEEE

Consumer Electronics Consumer electronics, also known as home electronics, are electronic devices intended for everyday household use. Consumer electronics include those used for entertainment, Communication, communications, and recreation. Historically, these prod ...

and

Information Theory Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...

Societies. He was on the governors board of the

for over 10 years, and was its president in 2002–2003.

Awards and honours

, ''for pioneering contributions to video, audio, and data recording technology, including compact disc, DVD, and Blu-ray'', 2017 *

Faraday Medal The Faraday Medal is a top international medal awarded by the UK Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) (previously called the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE)). As one of the world's most prestigious awards in engineering, it ...

IET __NOTOC__ IET can refer to: Organizations * Institute of Educational Technology, part of the Open University * Institution of Engineering and Technology, a UK-based professional engineering institution ** Institute of Engineers and Technicians, wh ...

, 2015 * Lifetime achievement finalist,

European Inventor Award The European Inventor Award (formerly European Inventor of the Year Award, renamed in 2010), are presented annually by the European Patent Office, sometimes supported by the respective Presidency of the Council of the European Union and by the Eur ...

, 2015 * Eduard Rhein Technology Award, ''for contributions to the theory and practice of channel codes that enable efficient and reliable optical recording, and creative contributions to

digital recording In digital recording, an audio signal, audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or Color, chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is s ...

technology'' awarded by the Eduard Rhein Foundation (

, 2014). *

Honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

(dr.h.c.) from the

University of Johannesburg The University of Johannesburg, colloquially known as UJ, is a public university A public university, state university, or public college is a university or college that is State ownership, owned by the state or receives significant fundi ...

, ''in recognition of the remarkable contributions he has made to intellectual and public life'' (

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

, 2014) * Member

Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen The ''Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen'' (Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities), located on the east side of the Spaarne in downtown Haarlem, Netherlands, was established in 1752 and is the oldest society for the ...

, Haarlem, 2012. * IEEE Chester Sall Consumer Electronics Award, ''For DC-free Multimode Code Design Using Novel Selection Criteria for Optical Recording Systems,'' (co-recipient with Jun Lee), 2011, * Foreign Associate of the

(

USA The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

, 2007) * SMPTE Progress Medal awarded by the

, ''for the central role played in research and development of audio and video recording products'' (

, 2004) *

Consumer Electronics Engineering Excellence Award (

, 2004) * Heyser Memorial lecturer awarded by the

(

, May 2004) * Technology and Engineering

Emmy Award The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the year, each with their own set of rules and award categor ...

awarded by the National Television Academy, ''for coding technology for optical recording formats'' (

, 2003) * Inducted into the

Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame The Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame, founded by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), honors leaders whose creativity, persistence, determination and personal charisma helped to shape the industry and made the consumer electronics marketpl ...

(

, 2003) * Knight of the

Order of Orange-Nassau The Order of Orange-Nassau () is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands. The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has performed acts of special merits for ...

(

, 2000) * Honorary Member of the Netherlands Electronics and Radio Society (

, 2000) * Millennium Medal awarded by the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

(

, 2000) * AES Gold Medal awarded by the

, ''for significant contributions to the advancement of consumer audio technology'' (

, 1999) * IEEE

, ''for a career of creative contributions to the technologies of digital video, audio, and data recording.'' (

, 1999) * Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation awarded by the

IEEE Information Theory Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

, ''for the invention of constrained codes for commercial recording systems'' (

, 1998) * AES 50th Anniversary Commemorative Medal awarded by the Audio Engineering Society (

, 1998) * Member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ...

(

, 1996) * Fellow of the

(

, 1996) *

IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award The IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award is a Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers#Technical field awards, Technical Field Award of the IEEE given for outstanding contributions to Consumer electronics, consumer electronic ...

''for pioneering contributions to consumer digital audio and video recording products'' (

, 1996) *

Alexander M. Poniatoff Alexander Matveevich Poniatoff (, tr. ''Aleksándr Matvéjevič Ponjatóv''; 25 March 1892 – 24 October 1980) was a Russian-born American electrical engineer. Poniatoff was born in 1892 in Russkaya Aysha, Kazansky District, Kazan Governorate, ...

Gold Medal Award for Technical Excellence awarded by the

, ''for outstanding contributions to the development of new techniques and/or equipment that have contributed to the advancement of audio or video magnetic recording and reproduction'' (

, 1994) * Sir J.J. Thomson Medal awarded by the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), 1993, ''for distinguished contributions to electronics.'' * Fellow of the

Institution of Electrical Engineers The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) was a British professional organisation of electronics, electrical, manufacturing, and information technology professionals, especially electrical engineers. It began in 1871 as the Society of Tel ...

(FIEE) (

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, 1993) *

Chartered Engineer Regulation and licensure in engineering is established by various jurisdictions of the world to encourage life, public welfare, safety, well-being, then environment and other interests of the general public and to define the licensure process thr ...

(CEng) (

, 1993) * AES Silver Medal awarded by the

, ''for major contributions to the development of digital audio recording systems'' (1992,

) * Fellow of the

(1992,

) * Fellow of the

, ''for contributions to optical laser recording and compact disc digital audio systems'' (

) His papers have received several awards: * 2009 Chester Sall Award for ‘’DC-free Multimode Code Design Using Novel Selection Criteria for Optical Recording Systems,’’ IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics (Co-recipient with Jun Lee). * 2008 Best Paper Award for ‘’A general construction of constrained parity-check codes for optical recording,’’ 2008

IEEE Communications Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office i ...

, Data Storage Technical Committee in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage (Co-recipient with Kui Cai) ).

Selected literature

*Codes for mass data storage systems, Shannon Foundation Publishers, 2004 (three editions) *Efficient balanced and maximum homopolymer-run restricted block codes for DNA-based data storage, IEEE Commun. Letters, 2019 (with Kui Cai) ) *Very efficient balanced codes, IEEE Journal Sel. Areas on Communications, 2010 (with Jos Weber). *How we made the compact disc, Nature, 2018. *Minimum Pearson Distance Detection for Multilevel Channels With Gain and/or Offset Mismatch, IEEE Trans. Information Theory, 2014 (with Jos Weber). *A Survey of Coding Techniques for Optical Disc Recording, IEEE Journal Sel. Areas on Communications, 2001) *Codes for Digital Recorders, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 1998 (with Paul Siegel and Jack Wolf) * Runlength-Limited Sequences, Proceedings IEEE, 1990) *The Digital Versatile Disc (

): System Requirements and Channel Coding,

SMPTE The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded by Charles Francis Jenkins in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and e ...

Journal, 1996. *Experiments Toward an Erasable

, (with J. Braat), J. Audio Eng. Soc., 1984.

KHMW Schouhamer Immink Prijs

The Royal Holland Society of Arts and Sciences established the Kees Schouhamer Immink Prize in 2019 as a means to encourage research on information science and telecommunications, two basic pillars of our information society. The prize, consisting of an honorarium and a diploma, is bestowed in recognition of a distinguished PhD thesis defended in the Netherlands.

References

Sources

* ''Codes for Mass Data Storage Systems, Second fully revised edition'', Shannon Foundation Publishers, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Nov. 2004.

* ''The Compact Disc Story'', AES Journal, pp. 458–465, May 199

*''The future of digital audio recording'', AES Journal., pp. 171–172, 199

* , EFM Patent, base code applied in

CD-R CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital media, digital optical disc data storage device, storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can only be Write once read many, written once and read arbitrarily many times. CD-R discs (CD-Rs) ...

* , EFMPlus Patent, base code applied in

DVD-RW DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are a collection of optical disc formats that can be written to by a DVD recorder and by computers using a DVD writer. The "recordable" discs are write-once read-many (WORM) media, where as "rewritable" discs a ...

, SACD

External links

Official website

IEEE Legacies

Winners SMPTE Progress Medal

Videos

IEEE Interview with Kees Immink winner of the 2017 IEEE Medal of Honor, Part 1 (5.46 min), Nov. 2017

IEEE Interview with Kees Immink, Part 2. (3 min), Nov. 2017.

IEEE Honors Ceremony, (10 min), May 2017

IEEE Medal of Honor, Kees Immink: The Birth of Digital Media, IEEE, (4 min), May, 2017

Faraday Medal, IET, (2.3 min), Nov. 2015

Alice Baxter interviews inventor Kornelis A. Schouhamer Immink, 11/06/15, BBC (3 mins), June 2015

* ttp://www.aes.org/historical/store/oralhistory/?code=ohp-016-DVD AES Oral History Project: Kees A.Schouhamer Immink, 2001
IEEE Honors Ceremony, Edison Medal, June 1999
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schouhamer Immink, Kees A. 1946 births 20th-century Dutch engineers 21st-century Dutch engineers Dutch electrical engineers 20th-century Dutch inventors Eindhoven University of Technology alumni Emmy Award winners Fellows of the IEEE IEEE Edison Medal recipients IEEE Medal of Honor recipients Knights of the Order of Orange-Nassau Living people Members of the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Foreign associates of the National Academy of Engineering Engineers from Rotterdam