"Mary, if you were a four legged animal and you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?"
"I don't know," said Mary, "but whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark."
Richard HammingDied 7 Jan 1998 at age 82 (born 11 Feb 1915). Richard Wesley Hamming was an American computer scientist and mathematician whodevisedcomputer Hamming codes - error-detecting and correcting codes (1947). These add one or more bits to the transmission of blocks of data, used for a parity check, so that errors can be corrected automatically. By making a resend of bad data unnecessary, efficiency improved for modems, compact disks and satellite communications. He also worked on programming languages, numerical analysis and the Hamming spectral window (used to smooth data before Fourier analysis is carried out). He taught at University of Louisville, then during WW II worked (1945) on computers with the Manhattan Project creating the atomic bomb. From 1946, he spent 30 years with Bell Telephone Labs, eventually becoming head of computing science research.« |
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