Andy gets his medal

Last week, Andrew Viterbi got his National Medal of Science. The USC Viterbi School marks the event with a press release and a video.

UCLA issued a press release for another Linkabit founder, Len Kleinrock, who also get his medal the same day. It doesn’t mention Viterbi, who was a UCLA professor before leaving to run Linkabit.

At least MIT — where both men got their master’s degree in EE — mentions both men equally, as does the White House press release.

All Linkabit founders get their National Medal

Later this month, two-thirds of the Linkabit founders will receive a National Medal of Science. With an earlier award, this means all three founders will have received one of the National Medals for lifetime achievement.

Andrew Viterbi will be among eight honorees scheduled to receive the award Sept. 29 in a White House ceremony with President Bush. Viterbi, the former JPL researcher and UCLA and UCSD professor, is of course the inventor of the Viterbi algorithm, widely used in all digital cellphones. He also advanced digital satellite communications as a co-founder and CTO of Linkabit and Qualcomm. He retired from Qualcomm in 2000, and since then has invested in startup companies through The Viterbi Group.

Also receiving a medal will be Leonard Kleinrock, the UCLA professor who was a cofounder and associated with Linkabit for several months when it was founded in 1968. Instead, he went back to working on his packet switching MIT doctoral thesis to ARPA secure routing requirements. This included getting the UCLA interface message processor (IMP) up and running, and using it to send the first e-mail message in October 1969.

The two men join the best known Linkabit (and Qualcomm) founder, who received the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1994.

Although the award nominations are administered by the National Science Foundation, sometimes there are political overtones to presidential awards in the sciences and arts. Irwin and Joan Jacobs have been major contributors to Democrat candidates and causes at the national level (including Bill Clinton), even if their San Diego political involvement was aligned against teachers and pro-reform education candidates aligned with then-SDUSD superintendent (and certified Friend of Bill) Alan Bersin.

Viterbi’s honor by Bush is certainly not for his fundraising prowess. Campaign reports as of Sept. 1 show that since 2000, Viterbi has given slightly more than $100,000 to Democrat (mainly Senate) candidates and associated committees. The notable exception of Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who’s facing a GOP primary challenge prior to his general election challenge by comedian Al Franken. Kleinrock has only one $500 contribution to the 2006 Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Certainly all three men had already proven that they deserve this national recognition, including being named Fellows of the IEEE and elected members of the National Academy of Engineering. Viterbi and Kleinrock in particular have received numerous awards for technical achievement in communications engineering, including the Marconi Prize.

Viterbi's honorable mention

Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Linkabit and Qualcomm, was one of four finalists for the biennual Millennium Technology Prize, which is awarded

to inspire and recognize innovations that can provide answers to the challenges of our time, promoting both the quality of human life and sustainable development.

The two previous winners of the prize invented the blue LED (which makes DVDs possible) and the world wide web (which makes reading this blog possible).

Brad Smith in Wireless Week explained how Viterbi’s 1967 publication of the Viterbi algorithm (allowing maximal signal/noise ratio on convolutionally encoded signals) changed the telecommunications world.

This morning in Helsinki, the Technology Academy of Finland. awarded the prize of €800,000 to another finalist, Robert Langer of MIT. Here’s the citation

Professor Robert Langer's innovations have had a significant impact on fighting cancer, heart disease, and numerous other diseases. His work has also brought about significant advances in tissue engineering, including synthetic replacement for biological tissues such as artificial skin. Over 100 million people a year are already using advanced drug delivery systems and this number is rising rapidly. In the future, tissue engineering may revolutionize medical treatment that could affect millions of other individuals. "Tissue engineering holds the promise of creating virtually any new tissue or organ," said Professor Langer.

Viterbi and the other finalists were awarded €115,000, which Viterbi previously said he’d donate to charity. Obviously this is still a high honor, crossing over from an industry-specific award to one recognized more broadly by society.

Vaudeville performers had a maxim: Never follow an animal act or a child act. So I guess I’d say that you don’t want to be a finalist against someone who’s curing cancer.