Edward Charles "Ed" Posner (August 10, 1933 – June 15, 1993) was an American

information theorist Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...

and

neural network A neural network is a network or neural circuit, circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up ...

researcher who became chief technologist at the

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 ...

and founded the

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (abbreviated as NeurIPS and formerly NIPS) is a machine learning and computational neuroscience conference held every December. The conference is currently a double-track meet ...

Education and career

Posner was born on August 10, 1933, in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

, and graduated from

Stuyvesant High School Stuyvesant High School (pronounced ), commonly referred to among its students as Stuy (pronounced ), is a State school, public university-preparatory school, college-preparatory, Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school ...

in 1950; at Stuyvesant, one of his close friends was mathematician

Paul Cohen Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician. He is best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, for which he was award ...

. He took only two years to complete his undergraduate studies in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...

at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, graduating in 1952, and he then switched to mathematics for a master's degree in 1953 and a PhD in 1957.. While a graduate student, he also visited

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

, and later claimed that he had been assigned to the desk there that had formerly been

Harry Nyquist Harry Nyquist (, ; February 7, 1889 – April 4, 1976) was a Swedish-American physicist and electronic engineer who made important contributions to communication theory. Personal life Nyquist was born in the village Nilsby of the parish Stora ...

's. His doctoral thesis, supervised by

Irving Kaplansky Irving Kaplansky (March 22, 1917 – June 25, 2006) was a mathematician, college professor, author, and amateur musician.O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Irving Kaplansky", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St And ...

, was on the subject of

ring theory In algebra, ring theory is the study of rings—algebraic structures in which addition and multiplication are defined and have similar properties to those operations defined for the integers. Ring theory studies the structure of rings, their r ...

and entitled ''Differentiably Simple Rings''; at only 26 pages long, it held the record for the shortest doctoral thesis at the university. After finishing his studies, he became a mathematics instructor at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

and then an assistant professor of mathematics at

Harvey Mudd College Harvey Mudd College (HMC) is a private college in Claremont, California, focused on science and engineering. It is part of the Claremont Colleges, which share adjoining campus grounds and resources. The college enrolls 902 undergraduate students ...

. In 1961,

Solomon W. Golomb Solomon Wolf Golomb (; May 30, 1932 – May 1, 2016) was an American mathematician, engineer, and professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, best known for his works on mathematical games. Most notably, he inv ...

hired him to lead the Information Processing Group at JPL. He led the group for 10 years and then, after a sequence of positions in higher management, he became chief technologist in JPL's Office of Telecommunications and Data Acquisition in 1982. He also held lecturer and visiting faculty positions in the

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathemat ...

and electrical engineering departments of the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

beginning in 1970. He died after being hit by a truck while bicycling to work on June 15, 1993.

Contributions

, Posner is the namesake of

Posner's theorem In algebra, Posner's theorem states that given a prime ring, prime polynomial identity algebra ''A'' with center ''Z'', the ring A \otimes_Z Z_ is a central simple algebra over Z_, the field of fractions of ''Z''. It is named after Ed Posner. Ref ...

, stating that certain tensor products of algebras with the fields of fractions of their

centers Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

are

central simple algebra In ring theory and related areas of mathematics a central simple algebra (CSA) over a field ''K'' is a finite-dimensional associative ''K''-algebra ''A'' which is simple, and for which the center is exactly ''K''. (Note that ''not'' every simp ...

s.. Posner's research in

information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...

and

coding theory Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes and their respective fitness for specific applications. Codes are used for data compression, cryptography, error detection and correction, data transmission and data storage. Codes are stud ...

was applied in the design of the

NASA Deep Space Network The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a worldwide network of American spacecraft communication ground segment facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), that supports NASA's interplanetar ...

, used for the communications between spacecraft and their base stations on Earth. He also studied

communications network A telecommunications network is a group of nodes interconnected by telecommunications links that are used to exchange messages between the nodes. The links may use a variety of technologies based on the methodologies of circuit switching, mes ...

s and

cellular telephone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

switching systems, and was an advocate for

basic research Basic research, also called pure research or fundamental research, is a type of scientific research with the aim of improving scientific theory, theories for better understanding and prediction of natural or other phenomena. In contrast, applied ...

in the US space program. Beginning in the early 1980s, Posner founded the study of

s at JPL and Caltech, and helped create the interdisciplinary graduate program in

Computation and Neural Systems The Computation and Neural Systems (CNS) program was established at the California Institute of Technology in 1986 with the goal of training Ph.D. students interested in exploring the relationship between the structure of neuron-like circuits/networ ...

at Caltech. He also helped found the annual

, served as general chair of the first conference in 1987, and chaired its oversight body, the NIPS Foundation..

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Posner, Ed 1933 births 1993 deaths People from Brooklyn 20th-century American mathematicians University of Chicago alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty Harvey Mudd College faculty California Institute of Technology faculty American information theorists Road incident deaths in California Scientists from New York City Mathematicians from New York (state)