Robert G. Gallager
Encyclopedia
Robert Gray Gallager is an American
electrical engineer known for his work on information theory
and communications networks. He was elected an IEEE Fellow
in 1968 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering
(NAE) in 1979. He received the Claude E. Shannon Award
from the IEEE Information Theory Society
in 1983. He also received the IEEE Medal of Honor
in 1990 "For fundamental contributions to communications coding techniques", the Marconi Prize
in 2003, and a
Dijkstra Prize
in 2004, among other honors. Currently (2008) he is Professor Emeritus of electrical engineering
and computer science
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.
He received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Pennsylvania
in 1953, and the S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from M.I.T.
in 1957 and 1960, respectively. He was a member of the technical staff at the Bell Telephone Laboratories
in 1953-1954 and then served in the U.S. Signal Corps from 1954 to 1956. He has been a faculty member at M.I.T.
since 1960 where he was Co-Director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems from 1986 to 1998, was named Fujitsu Professor in 1988, and became Professor Emeritus in 2001. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley
, in 1965 and a Visiting Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications
, Paris
, in 1978.
Gallager's 1960 Sc.D. thesis, Low Density Parity Check Codes, was published by the M.I.T Press
as a monograph
in 1963. An abbreviated version appeared earlier (January 1962) in the IRE Transactions on Information Theory and was republished in the 1974 IEEE Press volume, Key Papers in The Development of Information Theory, edited by Elwyn Berlekamp. This paper won an IEEE Information Theory Society Golden-Jubilee Paper Award in 1998 and its subject matter is a very active area of research today. Gallager's January 1965 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, "A Simple Derivation of the Coding Theorem and some Applications, won the 1966 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award "for the most outstanding paper, reporting original work, in the Transactions, Journals and Magazines of the IEEE Societies, or in the Proceedings of the IEEE" and also won another IEEE Information Theory Society
Golden-Jubilee Paper Award in 1998. His book, Information Theory and Reliable Communication, Wiley 1968, placed Information Theory on a sound mathematical foundation and is still considered by many as the standard textbook on information theory.
In the mid-1970s, Gallager's research focus shifted to data networks, focusing on distributed algorithms, routing, congestion control, and random access techniques. Data Networks, Prentice Hall, 1988, second edition 1992, co-authored with Dimitri Bertsekas
, helped provide a conceptual foundation for this field. His June 1993 joint paper with Abhay K. Parekh, "A generalized processor sharing
approach to flow control" in ISN won the IEEE Communication Society's William Bennett Prize Paper Award "for the best original paper published in the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking in the past year" and a preliminary version won the Prize Paper Award for Infocom 1993.
In the 1990s, Gallager's interests shifted back to information theory and to stochastic processes. He wrote the 1996 textbook, Discrete Stochastic Processes. Gallager's current interests are in information theory, wireless communication, all optical networks, data networks, and stochastic processes.
Over the years, Gallager has taught and mentored many graduate students, many of whom are now themselves leading researchers in their fields. He received the M.I.T.
Graduate Student Council Teaching Award for 1993.
Gallager's latest textbook, Principles of Digital Communication was published by Cambridge University Press in 2008.
Gallager was instrumental in the founding of Codex Corporation
in 1962 (now part of Motorola
) and consulted there for many years. He served Codex as Acting Vice President for Research in 1971-1972. His fundamental studies on quadrature amplitude modulation
and detection led directly to the 9600 bit/s modems that provided Codex's commercial success. He has also consulted for the M.I.T.
Lincoln Laboratory
a number of other companies. He has been granted five patents on his inventions.
Gallager was President of the IEEE Information Theory Society
in 1971, a member of its Board of Governors from 1965 to 1972 and again from 1979 to 1988. He served the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory as Associate Editor for Coding 1963-1964 and as Associate Editor for Computer Communications from 1977 to 1980. He was Chairman of the Advisory committee to the National Science Foundation
Division on Networking and Communication Research and Infrastructure from 1989 to 1992, and has been on numerous visiting committees for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
electrical engineer known for his work on information theory
Information theory
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
and communications networks. He was elected an IEEE Fellow
IEEE Fellow
An IEEE member is elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow for "unusual distinction in the profession and shall be conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest"...
in 1968 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering
National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
(NAE) in 1979. He received the Claude E. Shannon Award
Claude E. Shannon Award
The Claude E. Shannon Award of the IEEE Information Theory Society was instituted to honour consistent and profound contributions to the field of information theory. Each Shannon Award winner is expected to present a Shannon Lecture at the following IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory...
from the IEEE Information Theory Society
IEEE Information Theory Society
The IEEE Information Theory Society , formerly the IEEE Information Theory Group, is a professional society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers focused on several aspects of information: its processing, transmission, storage, and usage; and the "foundations of the...
in 1983. He also received the IEEE Medal of Honor
IEEE Medal of Honor
The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contribution or an extraordinary career in the IEEE fields of...
in 1990 "For fundamental contributions to communications coding techniques", the Marconi Prize
Marconi Prize
The Marconi Prize is an annual award by The Marconi Society, which recognizes advancements in information technology and communications. The Prize includes a $100,000 honorarium and a work of sculpture, and honorees are called Marconi Fellows...
in 2003, and a
Dijkstra Prize
Dijkstra Prize
The Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing is given for outstanding papers on the principles of distributed computing, whose significance and impact on the theory and/or practice of distributed computing has been evident for at least a decade...
in 2004, among other honors. Currently (2008) he is Professor Emeritus of electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
.
He received the B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1953, and the S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
from M.I.T.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1957 and 1960, respectively. He was a member of the technical staff at the Bell Telephone Laboratories
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
in 1953-1954 and then served in the U.S. Signal Corps from 1954 to 1956. He has been a faculty member at M.I.T.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
since 1960 where he was Co-Director of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems from 1986 to 1998, was named Fujitsu Professor in 1988, and became Professor Emeritus in 2001. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, in 1965 and a Visiting Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications
École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications
Télécom ParisTech is one of the most prestigious and selective grandes écoles in France and one of the finest institutions in the field of Telecommunications...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, in 1978.
Gallager's 1960 Sc.D. thesis, Low Density Parity Check Codes, was published by the M.I.T Press
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
as a monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
in 1963. An abbreviated version appeared earlier (January 1962) in the IRE Transactions on Information Theory and was republished in the 1974 IEEE Press volume, Key Papers in The Development of Information Theory, edited by Elwyn Berlekamp. This paper won an IEEE Information Theory Society Golden-Jubilee Paper Award in 1998 and its subject matter is a very active area of research today. Gallager's January 1965 paper in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, "A Simple Derivation of the Coding Theorem and some Applications, won the 1966 IEEE W.R.G. Baker Award "for the most outstanding paper, reporting original work, in the Transactions, Journals and Magazines of the IEEE Societies, or in the Proceedings of the IEEE" and also won another IEEE Information Theory Society
IEEE Information Theory Society
The IEEE Information Theory Society , formerly the IEEE Information Theory Group, is a professional society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers focused on several aspects of information: its processing, transmission, storage, and usage; and the "foundations of the...
Golden-Jubilee Paper Award in 1998. His book, Information Theory and Reliable Communication, Wiley 1968, placed Information Theory on a sound mathematical foundation and is still considered by many as the standard textbook on information theory.
In the mid-1970s, Gallager's research focus shifted to data networks, focusing on distributed algorithms, routing, congestion control, and random access techniques. Data Networks, Prentice Hall, 1988, second edition 1992, co-authored with Dimitri Bertsekas
Dimitri Bertsekas
Dimitri Bertsekas is an applied mathematician and computer scientist, and a professor at the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts.- Biography :...
, helped provide a conceptual foundation for this field. His June 1993 joint paper with Abhay K. Parekh, "A generalized processor sharing
Generalized Processor Sharing
Generalized processor sharing was developed as a service discipline to share the capacity of congested communications links in an efficient, flexible and fair manner...
approach to flow control" in ISN won the IEEE Communication Society's William Bennett Prize Paper Award "for the best original paper published in the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking in the past year" and a preliminary version won the Prize Paper Award for Infocom 1993.
In the 1990s, Gallager's interests shifted back to information theory and to stochastic processes. He wrote the 1996 textbook, Discrete Stochastic Processes. Gallager's current interests are in information theory, wireless communication, all optical networks, data networks, and stochastic processes.
Over the years, Gallager has taught and mentored many graduate students, many of whom are now themselves leading researchers in their fields. He received the M.I.T.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Graduate Student Council Teaching Award for 1993.
Gallager's latest textbook, Principles of Digital Communication was published by Cambridge University Press in 2008.
Gallager was instrumental in the founding of Codex Corporation
Codex Corporation
Codex Corporation was a high-tech company, based in Newton, Massachusetts. The company was founded in July 1962 by James M. Cryer Jr. and Arthur Kohlenberg, with the support of Robert Gallager, who helped them as technology consultant ....
in 1962 (now part of Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
) and consulted there for many years. He served Codex as Acting Vice President for Research in 1971-1972. His fundamental studies on quadrature amplitude modulation
Quadrature amplitude modulation
Quadrature amplitude modulation is both an analog and a digital modulation scheme. It conveys two analog message signals, or two digital bit streams, by changing the amplitudes of two carrier waves, using the amplitude-shift keying digital modulation scheme or amplitude modulation analog...
and detection led directly to the 9600 bit/s modems that provided Codex's commercial success. He has also consulted for the M.I.T.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Lincoln Laboratory
Lincoln Laboratory
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as...
a number of other companies. He has been granted five patents on his inventions.
Gallager was President of the IEEE Information Theory Society
IEEE Information Theory Society
The IEEE Information Theory Society , formerly the IEEE Information Theory Group, is a professional society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers focused on several aspects of information: its processing, transmission, storage, and usage; and the "foundations of the...
in 1971, a member of its Board of Governors from 1965 to 1972 and again from 1979 to 1988. He served the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory as Associate Editor for Coding 1963-1964 and as Associate Editor for Computer Communications from 1977 to 1980. He was Chairman of the Advisory committee to the National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
Division on Networking and Communication Research and Infrastructure from 1989 to 1992, and has been on numerous visiting committees for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments.
External links
- Biography from the IEEE History Center.
- Marconi Fellow biography
- Mathematics Genealogy Project data
- Home page at MIT.
- Publications from Google ScholarGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online journals of Europe and America's largest...
. - Publications from DBLPDBLPDBLP is a computer science bibliography website hosted at Universität Trier, in Germany. It was originally a database and logic programming bibliography site, and has existed at least since the 1980s. DBLP listed more than 1.3 million articles on computer science in January 2010...
. - Claude E. Shannon Award from the IEEE Information Theory Society.