Peter Elias

Peter Elias
Born	(1923-11-23)November 23, 1923 New Brunswick, New Jersey
Died	December 7, 2001(2001-12-07) (aged 78)[1] Cambridge, Massachusetts
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
Scientific career
Fields	Information theory, Coding theory

Peter Elias (November 23, 1923 – December 7, 2001^[1]) 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);^[2] the Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation of the IEEE Information Theory Society (1998);^[3] and the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (2002).^[4]

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.^[5] His father Nathaniel Mendel Elias,^[6] born on February 21, 1895,^[7] 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^[8] and Pepi Pauline Cypres (daughter of Peretz Hacohen Cypres and Lea Breindel Cypres^[9]) who married in 1889 in Kraków, Poland.^[10]

Death

Elias died (at age 78) on December 7, 2001, of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.^[1]

See also

• Elias coding

References

1. Sales, Robert J. (December 10, 2001). "MIT Professor Peter Elias dies at 78; Was computer science pioneer". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
2. "Claude E. Shannon Award Recipients". IEEE Information Theory Society. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
3. "Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation". IEEE Information Theory Society. Retrieved July 14, 2011.
4. "IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 20, 2010. Retrieved May 29, 2011.
5. "Anna Elias". geni_family_tree. 19 April 1897. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
6. "Barbara Elias Wrote Poetry, Was Independent Thinker". The Vineyard Gazette - Martha's Vineyard News. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
7. "Nathanial Mandel Elias". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
8. "Emil Elias". geni_family_tree. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
9. "Pepi Pauline Elias". geni_family_tree. 13 December 1863. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
10. "Elliott Feiden Family Collection". www.europeana.eu. Retrieved 2017-06-22.

External links

• Peter Elias at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Robert G. Gallager, "Peter Elias", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2008)
• Peter Elias papers, MC-0606. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Distinctive Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts.