Richard Hamming

Name: Richard Wesley Hamming

Born: February 11, 1915, in Chicago, Illinois, USA

Death: January 7, 1998 (Age: 82)

Computer-related contributions

• American mathematician and author whose work greatly effected the fields of computer science and telecommunications.
• Invented Hamming codes - computer error-detecting and correcting codes.
• Known for Hamming window, Hamming numbers, sphere packing, and Hamming distance.
• Founder and president of the ACM.
• Worked on the Manhattan Project in 1945, programming one of the earliest electronic digital computers.

Significant publications

• The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1997).
• The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers (1994).
• Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985).
• Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (1962).

Honors and awards

• Basic Research Award, Eduard Rhein Foundation (1996).
• Certificate of Merit, Franklin Institute (1996).
• Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (1994).
• IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, named after him and was the first recipient of this medal (1988).
• Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery (1968).

Quotes

"There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts that people cannot think."