Irving S.

Reed
Irving Stoy Reed (November 12, 1923 – September 11,
Irving Stoy Reed
2012)[1][2] was an American mathematician and engineer. He is
best known for co-inventing a class of algebraic error-correcting Born November 12, 1923
and error-detecting codes known as Reed–Solomon codes in Seattle, Washington,
collaboration with Gustave Solomon. He also co-invented the U.S.
Reed–Muller code. Died September 11, 2012
Reed made many contributions to areas of electrical engineering (aged 88)
including radar, signal processing, and image processing. He was Alma mater California Institute of
part of the team that built the MADDIDA, guidance system for Technology
Northrop's Snark cruise missile – one of the first digital computers.
Known for Reed–Solomon code,
He developed and introduced the now-standard Register Transfer
Reed–Muller code
Language to the computer community while at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. He was a faculty Awards Claude E. Shannon
member of the Electrical Engineering-Systems Department of the Award (1982)
University of Southern California from 1962 to 1993. IEEE Richard W.
Hamming Medal
Reed was a member of the National Academy of Engineering
(1989)
(1979)[3] and a Fellow of the IEEE (1973),[2] a winner of the
Claude E. Shannon Award, the IEEE Computer Society Charles Scientific career
Babbage Award, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (1989)[4] Fields Information theory,
and with Gustave Solomon, the 1995 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Award. Coding theory
In 1998 Reed received a Golden Jubilee Award for Technological
Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society.[5]

Anecdotes
The University of Southern California graduate school of electrical engineering required doctoral students
to pass an oral screening exam, in which there were eight categories of test questions. Reed always asked
the questions about electromagnetism and specifically Maxwell's equations, which he obviously viewed as
fundamental to communication theory.

While a student in mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, Reed did not complete his required
physical education courses due to time pressure and was set to enter the Navy. The only way he could
graduate was to obtain a special release from Robert A. Millikan, the university's president and a former
physical education instructor as well as a Nobel Prize winner and a noted hard-liner on the physical
education requirement. As Reed was in Millikan's office pleading his case, he saw reprints of two papers he
had published as an undergraduate on the president's table and drew them to Millikan's attention. Millikan
smiled and said "You seem to me a healthy young man. I believe you will do well in the service of your
country as a graduate of the California Institute of Technology."

Reed and colleagues demonstrated the MADDIDA computer to John von Neumann at the Institute for
Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The problem set for MADDIDA was computation of a
mathematical function. Von Neumann, a noted lightning calculator, kept up with the computer and checked
its results with a paper and pencil.

See also
Computer Research Corporation (CRC)
Reed–Muller expansion

References
1. "USC - Viterbi School of Engineering - in Memoriam: Professor Emeritus Irving S. Reed, 88"
(http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2012/in-memoriam-professor.htm).
2. Wang, Lung-Jen; Hsieh, Wen-Shyong; Truong, Trieu-Kien; Reed, Irving S.; Cheng, T. C.
(2001). "A fast efficient computation of cubic-spline interpolation in image codec". IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing. 49 (6): 1189–1197. Bibcode:2001ITSP...49.1189W (http
s://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001ITSP...49.1189W). doi:10.1109/78.923301 (https://doi.org/
10.1109%2F78.923301).
3. "NAE Members Directory – Dr. Irving S. Reed" (http://www.nae.edu/MembersSection/Directo
ry20412/28691.aspx). NAE. Retrieved June 2, 2011.
4. "IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients" (http://www.ieee.org/documents/hamming_rl.
pdf) (PDF). IEEE. Retrieved May 29, 2011.
5. "Golden Jubilee Awards for Technological Innovation" (http://www.itsoc.org/honors/golden-ju
bilee-awards-for-technological-innovation). IEEE Information Theory Society. Retrieved
July 14, 2011.

External links
Irvine C. Reed Bio at University of Southern California (https://web.archive.org/web/2014111
5071727/http://ee.usc.edu/faculty_staff/faculty_directory/reed.htm) (Archived)

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