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Solomon W. Golomb
Born	Solomon Wolf Golomb (1932-05-30)May 30, 1932 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died	May 1, 2016(2016-05-01) (aged 83) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Johns Hopkins University Harvard University
Awards	Claude E. Shannon Award (1985) IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (2000) National Medal of Science (2011)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics, engineering
Institutions	University of Southern California
Doctoral advisor	David Widder

Solomon Wolf Golomb (/ɡəˈloʊm/ gə-LOHM; May 30, 1932 – May 1, 2016) was an American mathematician, engineer, and professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, best known for his works on mathematical games. Most notably, he invented Cheskers (a hybrid between chess and checkers) in 1948. He also fully described polyominoes in 1953. He specialized in problems of combinatorial analysis, number theory, coding theory, and communications. Pentomino boardgames, based on his work, would go on to inspire Tetris.

Achievements

Golomb, a graduate of the Baltimore City College high school, received his bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University and master's and doctorate degree in mathematics from Harvard University in 1957 with a dissertation on "Problems in the Distribution of the Prime Numbers".

While working at the Glenn L. Martin Company he became interested in communications theory and began his work on shift register sequences. He spent his Fulbright year at the University of Oslo and then joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, where he researched military and space communications. He joined the faculty of USC in 1963 and was awarded full tenure two years later.

Golomb pioneered the identification of the characteristics and merits of maximum length shift register sequences, also known as pseudorandom or pseudonoise sequences, which have extensive military, industrial and consumer applications. Today, millions of cordless and cellular phones employ pseudorandom direct-sequence spread spectrum implemented with shift register sequences. His efforts made USC a center for communications research.

Golomb was the inventor of Golomb coding, a form of entropy encoding. Golomb rulers, used in astronomy and in data encryption, are also named for him, as is one of the main generation techniques of Costas arrays, the Lempel-Golomb generation method.

He was a regular columnist, writing Golomb's Puzzle Column in the IEEE Information Society Newsletter. He was also a frequent contributor to Scientific American's Mathematical Games column (The column did much to publicize his discoveries about polyominoes and pentominoes) and a frequent participant in Gathering 4 Gardner conferences. Among his contributions to recreational mathematics are Rep-tiles. He also contributed a puzzle to each issue of the Johns Hopkins Magazine, a monthly publication of his undergraduate alma mater, for a column called "Golomb's Gambits", and was a frequent contributor to Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics.

Awards

Golomb was a member of both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.

In 1985, he received the Shannon Award of the Information Theory Society of the IEEE.

In 1992, he received the medal of the U.S. National Security Agency for his research, and he has also been the recipient of the Lomonosov Medal of the Russian Academy of Science and the Kapitsa Medal of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

In 2000, he was awarded the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for his exceptional contributions to information sciences and systems. He was singled out as a major figure of coding and information theory for over four decades, specifically for his ability to apply advanced mathematics to problems in digital communications.

In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. That same year, it was announced that he had been selected to receive the National Medal of Science. In 2014, he was elected as a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics "for contributions to coding theory, data encryption, communications, and mathematical games."

In 2013, he was awarded the National Medal of Science 2011.

In 2016, he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering "for pioneering work in space communications and the design of digital spread spectrum signals, transmissions that provide security, interference suppression, and precise location for cryptography; missile guidance; defense, space, and cellular communications; radar; sonar; and GPS."

Selected books

• Golomb, Solomon; Gong, Guang (2005). Signal Design for Good Correlation. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82104-5.
• Golomb, Solomon (1996). Polyominoes (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02444-8.
• Golomb, Solomon (2017). Shift Register Sequences (3rd ed.). World Scientific. doi:10.1142/9361. ISBN 978-981-4632-00-3.
• Golomb, Beatrice; Gong, Guang; Hales, Alfred, eds. (2023). The Wisdom of Solomon: The Genius and Legacy of Solomon Golomb. World Scientific. doi:10.1142/12211. ISBN 978-981-123-436-1. This book contains some previously hard-to-find works of Solomon Golomb.

See also

• Golomb graph
• Golomb sequence
• Polyomino

References

1. Solomon W. Golomb - 2016 Laureate of the Franklin Institute in Electrical Engineering
2. "Solomon W. Golomb (May 30, 1932 - May 1, 2016) | Information Theory Society".
3. Eric Harshbarger - Pentominoes
4. people.rit.edu - Introduction - polyomino and pentomino
5. Romo, Vanessa. "Happy Birthday, Tetris. 35 Years Later You're As Addictive And Tetromino-y As Ever". NPR.org. NPR.
6. Golomb, Solomon W. (1967). Shift register sequences. Laguna Hills, Calif.: Aegean Park Press. ISBN 978-0894120480.
7. About Gathering 4 Gardner Foundation Archived May 7, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
8. "Search". Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved July 1, 2013.
9. "IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 20, 2010. Retrieved May 29, 2011.
10. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2013-01-19.
11. www.whitehouse.gov
12. SIAM Fellows: Class of 2015, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, retrieved October 8, 2015.
13. "Golomb receives National Medal of Science from Obama". University of Southern California. February 1, 2013. Retrieved October 24, 2016.
14. "Solomon W. Golomb | The Franklin Institute". www.fi.edu. October 28, 2015. Retrieved May 2, 2016.

External links

• Biography of Dr. Golomb at the USC Electrical Engineering Department's website
• Solomon W. Golomb at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

• 1932 births
• 2016 deaths
• 20th-century American mathematicians
• 21st-century American mathematicians
• Combinatorial game theorists
• Recreational mathematicians
• Mathematics popularizers
• Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
• American information theorists
• Johns Hopkins University alumni
• American number theorists
• University of Southern California faculty
• Baltimore City College alumni
• Tetris
• Chess variant inventors
• National Medal of Science laureates
• Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
• Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• 20th-century American Jews
• Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• Burials at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery
• Mathematicians from Maryland
• 21st-century American Jews
• Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute) laureates