Alumni Home > News & Events > Noteworthy > Alumni Profiles

Andrew Viterbi '56, SM '57

Digital Communications Inventor Began in the Sputnik Era

Andrew Viterbi '56, SM '57

Ask Andrew Viterbi '56, SM '57, about the pressing issue facing the digital communications field today and he will tell you—it's privacy.

He should know. Google the name "Andrew Viterbi" and his life story unfolds, revealing his success story. The son of Italian Jewish refugees fleeing persecution, Viterbi went on from MIT to set precedents in the burgeoning field of digital communications. He developed the Viterbi Algorithm, a decoding procedure with applications to innumerable digital communication devices, and he launched two successful companies while keeping a foot firmly planted in academia.

"My role models were my professors at MIT," Viterbi says. "My goal in life was to be like them."

Viterbi credits MIT and those professors for much of his career's direction. "MIT had a tremendous impact," he says. "I am not sure any other school would have done that. At the time I was there, MIT was probably five to ten years ahead of every other school." After studying electrical engineering at MIT, Viterbi went to the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). Viterbi arrived at JPL four months before the Russians launched Sputnik, which led the U.S. to boost its investment in science. "I went to the right place at the right time," he says.

He worked on digital communications for Explorer I, which led to his PhD research on error correction codes at the University of Southern California. Around that time he also married his wife, Erna Finci, and had the first of his three children.

For 10 years, Viterbi taught digital communications and information theory at UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Science. He put his theory into action when he cofounded Linkabit Corp. In 1985, Viterbi and colleagues including Irwin Jacobs SM '57, ScD '59 started Qualcomm, a leading digital wireless communications firm. Viterbi's technology allows for shared radio frequencies and increases system capacity many times over analog system capacity.

In 2000, Viterbi was able to retire thanks to Qualcomm's success. He continues to lecture and invest in new start-ups with his venture capital company, the Viterbi Group.

Living in Southern California, he is now primarily focused on his family, travel, and the future of telecommunications, which he says is both in broadband access and issues of digital security. "Increased security can be achieved," he says.

By Sasha Brown-Worsham