Communications of the ACM
Viterbi wins $500,000 Draper Prize
Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi will receive the Charles Stark Draper Prize during a ceremony in February.
Credit: Sean M. Haffey
Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi will receive the $500,000 Charles Stark Draper Prize for creating the "Viterbi algorithm," a famous mathematical formula that helped the world make the transition from analog to digital communications.
"The algorithm has enabled innovation across multiple disciplines," Kaigham J. Gabriel, president of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA, said in a statement. "Its pervasive impact has enabled technology that plays a critical role today in fields as diverse as medicine, national security, and commercial telecommunications."
Viterbi -- one of San Diego's leading philanthropists -- created the algorithm in the 1960s, providing engineers with a way to decode convoluted data. The breakthrough helped Viterbi and Irwin Jacobs to found Qualcomm and turn the company into a telecommunications giant. The algorithm is used in everything from text messaging to genetic sequencing.
The Draper Prize was created by the National Academy of Engineering and is given in honor the late Charles Draper, who is widely known as the "father of inertial navigation."
The 80 year-old Viterbi will formally receive the prize during a ceremony in February.
From The San Diego Union-Tribune
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