Dr. Norman Abramson

An American 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). In 1998, he was given the IEEE Information Theory Society Golden Jubilee Award for the invention of the first random access protocol. Also in 2007 he was awarded the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. 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 is currently the Vice President of Aloha Networks, established in San Francisco (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 1960s he worked on the ALOHAnet and continued to develop spread spectrum techniques in the 1980s.