JERUSALEM (Press Release) — Dr. Andrew J. Viterbi — co-founder of San Diego-based Qualcomm, a major donor to University of California San Diego, and Presidential Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering — recently gave Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) students a lecture on the history of digital communication during his visit to the campus.
Dr. Viterbi, an Italian Jewish-American electrical engineer and businessman who invented the “Viterbi algorithm,” which is used in most digital mobile phones and digital satellite receivers, as well as in such diverse fields as data recording, voice recognition, and DNA sequence analysis. His lecture was in honor of his late friend and mentor Solomon Golomb, a mathematician, engineer, and professor of electrical engineering at USC, best known for his works on mathematical games. The annual JCT Golomb lecture also memorialized Yehuda Leib Golomb z”l and Rabbi Elchanan Zvi Golomb z”l.
During his lecture, Dr. Viterbi talked the students through what he called the three stages of digital wireless communication — innovation, implementation, and exploitation — and how it has affected society for better or worse. His lecture focused mostly on the pioneers who marked the “Initial Wireless Innovation Era” from 1800-1950 and the “Digital Wireless Implementation Era” from 1958-2020.
“It’s an unusual pleasure to welcome Dr. Andrew Viterbi to the JCT campus,” JCT President Chaim Sukenik said in introductory remarks. “The Viterbi family came to the United States fleeing World War II. Dr. Virterbi worked as an engineer and worked for companies developing exciting new technologies, and he was a central part of that.”
The relationship between Dr. Viterbi and Golomb, Sukenik said, is notable because “they were not only personal friends but worked closely together for many years.”
Alan Wilner, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, said, “Both Andrew Viterbi and Solomon Golomb loom large on the world’s stage, but even more so and very intimately at the University of Southern California. You could say that Andy and Sol have been entangled as quantum particles both personally and professionally for well over half a century.”
“In a postcard of USC announcing Sol will receive the National Medal of Science, I looked closely and saw he wasn’t holding a technical book but a chumash — the five books of Moses,” Wilner observed. “Sol felt a special connection to JCT. There is a room in USC that chronicles the Viterbi family and includes Andy’s monumental technical achievements. Importantly, on the display for all to see is the Jewish identity of the Viterbis including their Sephardic family history and Andy’s Italian Jewish history. Both Andy and Sol bring to mind the passage in the Talmud that describes the three characteristics that mark the DNA of the Jew — merciful, modestly bashful and performing acts of kindness. The personal and professional stories of Andy and Sol in all three categories abound.”
From 1997 until 2001, Dr. Viterbi served on the U.S. President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee. Since 1983, he has been active on the MIT Visiting Committee for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. A recipient of many distinguished awards, he won the National Medal of Science by President George W. Bush in 2008 for the Viterbi algorithm, as well as for his contributions to Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless technology that transformed the theory and practice of digital communications.
This past April, UC San Diego broke ground on the Viterbi Family Vision Research Center, which is supported by a $50 million gift made in 2018 by Dr. Viterbi.
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Preceding provided by the Jerusalem College of Technology