Richard Blahut

Richard Blahut ( born June 9, 1937 in Orange, New Jersey) is an American computer scientist, known for contributions to coding theory (error correcting codes ), digital signal processing and information theory.

Blahut studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a Bachelor 's degree in 1960, at Stevens Institute of Technology with a master's degree in 1964 and 1972 at Cornell University in Electrical Engineering at Toby Berger PhD (An hypothesis testing approach to information theory ), where he also lectured from 1973. 1964 to 1980 he was with IBM. In 1994 he became a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.

He was variously a visiting professor, including Princeton 1989. 2005 he received the Claude E. Shannon Award and 1998 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal for his contributions to error-correcting codes, especially its combination of algebraic coding theory to digital transformation techniques.

He is a Fellow of the IEEE (1981 ), the National Academy of Engineering (1990) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1980, he was IBM Fellow. He received the IEEE Third Millennium Medal.

Writings

• Algebraic Codes for Data Transmission, Cambridge University Press 2002
• Algebraic Codes on Lines, Planes, and Curves: An Engineering Approach, Cambridge University Press 2008
• Fast Algorithms for Digital Signal Processing, Addison -Wesley 1985
• Theory of Remote Image Formation, Cambridge University Press 2004