Peter Elias Explained

Peter Elias
Birth Date:23 November 1923
Birth Place:New Brunswick, New Jersey
Death Place:Cambridge, Massachusetts
Fields:Information theory, Coding theory
Alma Mater:Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Harvard University
Known For:Binary erasure channel
Convolutional code
List decoding
Arithmetic coding
Error exponent
Universal code (data compression)
Differential pulse-code modulation

Peter Elias (November 23, 1923 – December 7, 2001) was a pioneer in the field of information theory. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty from 1953 to 1991. In 1955, Elias introduced convolutional codes as an alternative to block codes. He also established the binary erasure channel and proposed list decoding of error-correcting codes as an alternative to unique decoding.

Career

Peter Elias was a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty from 1953 to 1991. From 1957 until 1966, he served as one of three founding editors of Information and Control.

Awards

Elias received the Claude E. Shannon Award of the IEEE Information Theory Society (1977);[1] the Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation of the IEEE Information Theory Society (1998);[2] and the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (2002).[3]

Family background

Peter Elias was born on November 23, 1923, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His mother Anna Elias (née Wahrhaftig) was born on April 19, 1897, in New York City.[4] His father Nathaniel Mendel Elias,[5] born on February 21, 1895,[6] worked for Thomas Edison in his Edison, New Jersey, laboratory after graduating from Columbia University with a degree in chemical engineering. His paternal grandparents were Emil Elias[7] and Pepi Pauline Cypres (daughter of Peretz Hacohen Cypres and Lea Breindel Cypres[8]) who married in 1889 in Kraków, Poland.[9]

Death

Elias died (at age 78) on December 7, 2001, of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.[10]

See also

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Claude E. Shannon Award Recipients . . August 12, 2017.
  2. Web site: Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation . . July 14, 2011.
  3. 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.
  4. Web site: Anna Elias. geni_family_tree. 19 April 1897 . en-US. 2017-06-22.
  5. News: Barbara Elias Wrote Poetry, Was Independent Thinker. The Vineyard Gazette - Martha's Vineyard News. 2017-06-22.
  6. Web site: Nathanial Mandel Elias. geni_family_tree. en-US. 2017-06-22.
  7. Web site: Emil Elias. geni_family_tree. en-US. 2017-06-22.
  8. Web site: Pepi Pauline Elias. geni_family_tree. 13 December 1863 . en-US. 2017-06-22.
  9. Web site: Elliott Feiden Family Collection. www.europeana.eu. en. 2017-06-22.
  10. Web site: Robert J. . Sales . MIT Professor Peter Elias dies at 78; Was computer science pioneer . December 10, 2001 . . August 12, 2017.