Quick Facts
Biography
Norman Manuel Abramson (April 1, 1932) is an American Jewish engineer and computer scientist, most known for developing the ALOHAnet system for wireless computer communication.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he received an A.B. in physics from Harvard University (1953), an M.A. in Physics from UCLA (1955), and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University (1958).
He worked as a research engineer in the Hughes Aircraft Company until 1955, when he joined the faculty at Stanford University (1955–65), was visiting professor at University of California at Berkeley (1966), before moving to University of Hawaii (1968–94), serving as professor of both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Director of Aloha Systems. He served as a CTO of Aloha Networks, which he co-founded in San Francisco in 1994.
His early research concerned radar signal characteristics and sampling theory, as well as frequency modulation and digital communication channels, error correcting codes, pattern recognition and machine learning and computing for seismic analysis. In the late 1990s he worked on the ALOHAnet and continued to develop spread spectrum techniques in the year 2010
Awards
- 1972: IEEE Sixth Region Achievement Award for contributions to Information Theory and Coding.
- 1980: IEEE Fellow Award for development of the ALOHA-System..
- 1992: Pacific Telecommunications Council 20th Anniversary Award for leadership in the PTC.
- 1995: IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award for development of the ALOHA System.
- 1998: Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society, for "the invention of the first random-access communication protocol".
- 2000: Technology Award from the German Eduard Rhein Foundation.
- 2007: IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal.
- 2011: C&C Prize.
Publications
- Information theory and coding (McGraw-Hill, 1963)
- Computer communication networks (Prentice-Hall, 1973). Editor with Franklin F. Kuo