Having just returned from the wonderful gathering at Whistler where our Society Symposium took place, I still feel enthralled by the momentous event of seeing on stage, together, almost all Shannon lecturers to date. They are now considered recipients of the newly established annual C.E. Shannon Award, the highest distinction bestowed by our Society on contributors to Information theory. This event undoubtedly belonged to the category of "living history". At some later time, someone will be reporting to the younger generations how it felt to see the absolutely "top-of-the-top" people in our field honored together for what they have given to Information Theory over the last half-century. Some may have been sporting gray or thinning hair from the passage of time but all were standing tall and robust and still thrilled by (and, most, still contributing to) the technical fascination of our field. This image will be enshrined into the memories of those who were lucky enough to witness it.
However, this is too recent an event to be the subject of this column despite its rich historic significance. Instead, I thought of searching back into the records and retrieving an anthology of anecdotes and trivia about some of the individual Shannon lecturers that may provide to those who don't know them a glimpse of their persona and of their human side (often with a dose of levity). In this regard, I hope that the readers (and the Shannon Lecturers) will forgive my indulgence in personal memories.
Let me start with Sol Golomb. Careful readers of this column will remember instances of Sol's wit reported earlier in conjunction with his participation in the NATO Advanced Study Institute series. Readers only have to turn the pages of this newsletter to his Puzzle column to observe his persistent and ever-intriguing intellect as he routinely invents problems that continue to challenge even the best amongst us. Many may still remember his immediate embrace and resolution of the puzzle offered to the ISIT banquet participants in Trondheim. He simply makes sure that there can be no "post-Golombian" times.
Consider next Elwyn Berlekamp. I must reveal that as a second-year Graduate Student at Princeton in 1968, I met Elwyn as the instructor (on leave from bell Labs) in my Coding Theory class. His book had just been published. Obviously, I didn't know who I was dealing with. All I knew was that during the first lecture, he finished the first two chapters of his book! I still remember a 13-page (yes, you read that right) mid-term exam and the kind make-up oral that followed to help the miserable amongst us register a decent score. Scary though the written exam was, I felt relieved to confront a sincerely caring and helpful oral examiner in him (rather than the Inquisitor that everyone expected). By the way, as an efficient means of proofreading his book, he offered $1.00 to any student who might discover a mistake in it. He was taken aback, though, when a student, after pointing out an error to him, returned the next day admitting that he was in error and claimed an additional dollar. As a closing note, I recall him delivering one of his presentations at an ISIT (I think it was in 1974 in Indiana) with his usual strongly modulated intonation that occasionally faded beyond a certain range, when the inimitable Fred Jelinek shouted from the back of the crowded room "can you mumble a little louder?"(!).
Everyone knows Bob Gallager. Few may know, however, that he was one of the plenary speakers in the 1973 ISIT in Ashkelon when, before anyone else, in an impressive display of vision and forecasting power, he unequivocally stated that the future challenges in our field lay in the area of communication networks. At least one person (myself) credits him for pointing to a fruitful area of research at an early time. Yet, on another occasion, he showed a considerable lack of discerning power by declaring "Mayacama" the best California Claret(!).
There are few, if any, who can rival Jim Massey in the skill of delivering a talk in a way that can elevate its content beyond its natural boundaries. And there are few who can rival Andy Viterbi in the skill of realizing a concept in a way that can surpass its potential. A story that couples the two men (that many of our readers undoubtedly remember) stems from Jim's Shannon Lecture in 1988 where he made reference to the "Minimum Likelihood Decoder". Confronted with chuckles and laughter that he had undoubtedly expected, he went on to say "why are you laughing? I have secured Venture Capital to invest in a new company called "Sink-a-bit". Amidst increasing enjoyment and encouragement from the audience he went on to state that the company's motto would be "Sink-a-buck in Sink-a-bit", an alliteration that is a play on the true slogan of Andy's pre-Qualcom venture "Link-a-buck to Link-a-bit". The audience reaction can be easily guessed.
Bigger-than-life is an apt characterization of Tom Cover. His physical presence and histrionic powers make him a formidable figure on any podium (or in any company, for that matter). I still remember him climbing the rocks around Masada in 1973 and leading a volleyball game in the pool of the hotel during the first IT workshop in the Berkshires in June of 1975. But my most vivid personal memory is the tour that we took around the Bordeaux wineries in 1980 during the weekend break of the NATO ASI in Chateau Bonas (you see what you've been missing?), when the majority of the wineries were of course --- closed. Tom is also a reliable source of intriguing ideas. I recall a Board of Governors meeting at which Nelson Blachman (then the Society's representative to the IEEE Standards Board) brought up the question of whether the Society had an interest in the establishment or development of a standard in any of its areas. Amidst general negative response, Tom suggested that it was within our power and purview to declare the "nat" as the standard unit of information as a replacement of the "bit". Imagine what this would have done to the computer industry!
Aaron Wyner has been perhaps the most dedicated, and even partisan, Information Theorist amongst us. His sense of activism and zest has always been an inspiration to the rest of us in the Society. Few may know that he was the architect of our society's revised constitution (that was crafted in the mid-seventies but only formally approved by the IEEE in the late eighties). And many fewer will remember Dave Slepian introducing him as a speaker in the seventies at a meeting at Comsat Labs in Clarksburg, MD with the comment that Bell Labs might be risking losing him to the CIA given the new interests of his as reflected in the title of his talk, which was: "The Wiretap Channel".
I'd like to close with a story about the most recent Shannon Lecturer, Dave Forney. In line with the title of his Shannon Lecture (Performance and Complexity), Dave's life is replete with a variety of activities in all of which he (at least) excelled(!). This was aptly remarked by Bruce Hajek who introduced him at Whistler. I recall having the fortune of participating in a sailing trip that included Dave, or, more correctly, in a sailing trip of Dave's that included me. One evening when our boat was anchored and I had just finished taking a shower and had dry clothes on, as a result of Dave's diligence in cleaning the deck, a gush of fresh water entered through the closed (but not hermetically) glass porthole over the bathroom and soaked me and my dry clothes. An instinctive, but, alas, inaudible (for Dave) scream on my part was the immediate result, only to be followed by a follow-up gush of water which Dave obliviously delivered over the porthole, as if saying, "shut up"!
And I hereby...comply.