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 The Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for obtaining the maximum a posteriori probability estimate of the most likely sequence of hidden states—called the Viterbi path—that results in a sequence of observed events, especiall ...

. He is the Presidential Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

's Viterbi School of Engineering, 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, 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 Anglicisation is the process by which a place or person becomes influenced by English culture or British culture, or a process of cultural and/or linguistic change in which something non-English becomes English. It can also refer to the influenc ...

it to Andrew.

Education

Viterbi attended the Boston Latin School, and then entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1952, studying electrical engineering. He received both BS and MS in electrical engineering 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 emphasi ...

in 1956 through the MIT chapter. He worked at

Raytheon Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest aerospace and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitali ...

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 ...

in Pasadena, where he started working on

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

for unmanned space missions, also helping to develop the

phase-locked loop A phase-locked loop or phase lock loop (PLL) is a control system that generates an output signal whose phase is related to the phase of an input signal. There are several different types; the simplest is an electronic circuit consisting of a ...

. Simultaneously, he was carrying out a PhD study at the

, where he graduated in 1963 in

digital communications Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

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 S ...

(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 land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

. In 1967 he proposed the

to decode convolutionally encoded data. It is still used widely in cellular phones for error correcting codes, 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 ...

, DNA analysis, 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 o ...

s. On advice of a lawyer, Viterbi did not patent the algorithm. Viterbi also helped to develop the

CDMA Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communicatio ...

standard for cell phone networks. Viterbi was the cofounder of Linkabit Corporation, with Irwin M. Jacobs 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 Ingenu, formerly known as On-Ramp Wireless, is a provider of wireless networks. The company focuses on machine to machine (M2M) communication by enabling devices to become Internet of Things (IoT) devices. History Ingenu was founded in 2008 ...

's board of directors. Virterbi was elected a member of the

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

in 1978.

In 1998 he was one of the few receiving a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from 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 ...

. 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 Viterbi School of Engineering 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. 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 Irwin M. Jacobs 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 The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

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 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 from the American Association of Engineering Societies. In 2013, Viterbi was inducted into the

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 U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also oper ...

. 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 in other languages'') is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a population of 275,524 in its administrative limits. The Sarajevo metropolitan area including Sarajevo ...

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, 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