Elwyn Berlekamp Explained

Elwyn Berlekamp
Birth Name:Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp
Birth Date:6 September 1940
Birth Place:Dover, Ohio, U.S.
Death Place:Piedmont, California, U.S.
Alma Mater:Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Workplaces:University of California, Berkeley
Doctoral Advisor:Robert G. Gallager
Thesis Title:Block coding with noiseless feedback
Thesis Year:1964
Thesis Url:https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/14783
Doctoral Students:Julia Kempe
Notable Students:Ken Thompson
Fields:Information theory, Coding theory, Combinatorial game theory
Known For:Berlekamp's algorithm
Berlekamp switching game
Berlekamp–Welch algorithm
Berlekamp–Massey algorithm
Berlekamp–Rabin algorithm
Berlekamp–Zassenhaus algorithm
Berlekamp–Van Lint–Seidel graph
Blockbusting
Combinatorial game theory
Cooling and heating
Coupon Go
Error-correcting codes with feedback
Partisan game
Phutball
Awards:IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (1991)
Claude E. Shannon Award (1993)

Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.[1] [2] Berlekamp was widely known for his work in computer science, coding theory and combinatorial game theory.

Berlekamp invented an algorithm to factor polynomials and the Berlekamp switching game, and was one of the inventors of the Berlekamp–Welch algorithm and the Berlekamp–Massey algorithms, which are used to implement Reed–Solomon error correction. He also co-invented the Berlekamp–Rabin algorithm, Berlekamp–Zassenhaus algorithm, and the Berlekamp–Van Lint–Seidel graph.

Berlekamp had also been active in investing, and ran Axcom, which became the Renaissance Technologies' Medallion Fund.

Life and education

Berlekamp was born in Dover, Ohio. His family moved to Northern Kentucky, where Berlekamp graduated from Ft. Thomas Highlands high school in Ft. Thomas, Campbell county, Kentucky. While an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was a Putnam Fellow in 1961.[3] He completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering in 1962. Continuing his studies at MIT, he finished his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1964; his advisors were Robert G. Gallager, Peter Elias, Claude Shannon, and John Wozencraft.

Berlekamp had two daughters and a son with his wife Jennifer. He lived in Piedmont, California and died in April 2019 at the age of 78 from complications of pulmonary fibrosis.[4]

Career

Berlekamp was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley from 1964 until 1966, when he became a mathematics researcher at Bell Labs. In 1971, Berlekamp returned to Berkeley as professor of mathematics and computer science, where he served as the advisor for over twenty doctoral students.[5]

He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1977)[6] and the National Academy of Sciences (1999).[7] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996,[8] and became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012.[9] In 1991, he received the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal,[10] and in 1993, the Claude E. Shannon Award. In 1998, he received a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society.[11] Along with Tom M. Rodgers[12] he was one of the founders of Gathering 4 Gardner and was on its board for many years.[13] In the mid-1980s, he was president of Cyclotomics, Inc., a corporation that developed error-correcting code technology.

He studied various games, including dots and boxes, fox and geese, and, especially, Go. Berlekamp and co-author David Wolfe describe methods for analyzing certain classes of Go endgames in the book Mathematical Go.

Berlekamp and Martin Gardner

Berlekamp was a close friend of Scientific American columnist Martin Gardner and was an important member of the gifted and diverse group of people that Gardner nurtured and acted as a conduit for; people who inspired Gardner and who were in turn inspired by him.[14] Berlekamp teamed up with John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy, two other close associates of Gardner, to co-author the book Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, leading to his recognition as one of the founders of combinatorial game theory.[15] The dedication of their book says, "To Martin Gardner, who has brought more mathematics to more millions than anyone else."[16]

Berlekamp and Gardner both had great love for and were strong advocates of recreational mathematics.[15] Conferences called Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) are held every two years to celebrate the Gardner legacy.[14] Berlekamp was one of the founders of G4G and was on its board of directors for many years.[17]

Selected publications

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. May 1996 . Contributors . IEEE Transactions on Information Theory . 42 . 3 . 1048 . 10.1109/TIT.1996.490574 . 0018-9448.
  2. http://math.berkeley.edu/index.php?module=mathfacultyman&MATHFACULTY_MAN_op=sView&MATHFACULTY_id=111 Elwyn Berlekamp
  3. Web site: Putnam Competition Individual and Team Winners . Mathematical Association of America. December 12, 2021.
  4. Web site: 2022 . Elwyn Berlekamp, game theorist and coding pioneer, dies at 78 . 2024-02-12 . Berkeley . en-us.
  5. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=22678 Contributors
  6. Web site: NAE Members Directory – Dr. Elwyn R. Berlekamp . . June 16, 2011.
  7. Web site: NAS Membership Directory . . June 16, 2011. Search with "Last Name" is Berlekamp.
  8. Web site: Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. June 16, 2011.
  9. Web site: Fellows of the American Mathematical Society . 2024-02-12 . American Mathematical Society . en.
  10. Web site: IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients . https://web.archive.org/web/20100620000223/http://ieee.org/documents/hamming_rl.pdf . dead . June 20, 2010 . . May 29, 2011.
  11. Web site: Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation . . July 14, 2011.
  12. News: Rothstein . Edward . 2004-04-03 . Puzzles + Math = Magic . 2024-02-12 . The New York Times . en-US . 0362-4331.
  13. http://gathering4gardner.org/ABOUT.html About Gathering 4 Gardner Foundation
  14. Web site: Hirth . Tiago . 2020-01-24 . Remembering Elwyn Berlekamp . 2024-02-12 . Gathering 4 Gardner . en-US.
  15. The Mathematical Legacy of Martin Gardner by Elwyn Berlekamp, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), September 2, 2014: Partly because of what I had read about them in Martin Gardner’s columns, I was appropriately awestruck in the 1960s when I first met Sol Golomb and then Richard Guy, each of whom had a large influence on my subsequent work. In 1969 Richard introduced me to John Horton Conway, and the three of us immediately began collaborating on a book that eventually became Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays. In the 1970s, I joined Conway in some of his many visits to Gardner’s home on Euclid Avenue, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Gardner soon became an enthusiastic advocate of our book project, and he previewed various snippets of it in his Scientific American columns.
  16. Berlekamp, Elwyn R., John H. Conway, and Richard K. Guy (1982). Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays Academic Press, .
  17. https://www.gathering4gardner.org/the-gathering-history/ History of the Gathering
  18. Golomb, Solomon. Solomon W. Golomb. Review: Winning ways for your mathematical plays, by E. R. Berlekamp, J. H. Conway, and R. K. Guy. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 1983. 8. 1. 108–111. 10.1090/s0273-0979-1983-15098-x. free.
  19. Guy, Richard K.. Nowakowski, Richard J.. Review: Mathematical Go: Chilling gets the last point, by Elwyn Berlekamp and David Wolfe. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.). 1995. 32. 4. 437–441. 10.1090/S0273-0979-1995-00601-4. free.