Robert Fano

Robert Mario Fano ( * 1917 in Turin, Italy) was until his retirement Professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Fano was known for his work on information theory. Above all, the Fano condition and developed together with Claude Shannon Shannon -Fano coding brought him international recognition in theoretical computer science.

Beginning of 1960, it dealt with time-sharing systems, which allows multiple users could work simultaneously on a computer ( multi-user system ). From 1963 to 1968 he led the MAC at MIT project, which later became the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory emerged.

Life

Fano was born in 1917 as the son of the mathematician Gino Fano and brother of the later theoretical physicist Ugo Fano in Turin, where he studied engineering. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States. At MIT, received his diploma in electrical engineering, received his PhD there after the war and taught since 1947 at MIT. Between 1950 and 1953 he headed the Working Group on radar technology at the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT.

In addition to his contributions to information theory, he published articles and books on microwaves, electromagnetics, network theory and textbooks on electrical engineering.

In 1976 he received the Claude E. Shannon Award for his work on information theory.

Publications

• George L. Ragan, ed, Microwave Transmission Circuits, vol. 9 in the Radiation Laboratory Series ( New York: McGraw -Hill, 1948), as a co -author.
• Electromagnetic Fields, Energy, and Forces (New York: Wiley, 1960), ie with Chu and Adler.
• Transmission of Information: A Statistical Theory of Communications (New York: Wiley and MIT Press, 1961).