Elwyn Berlekamp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (born September 6, 1940 in Dover, Ohio) is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his work in information theory and combinatorial game theory.
As an undergraduate at MIT, he was a Putnam Fellow in 1961. He completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in electrical engineering in 1962. Continuing his studies at MIT, he finished his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1964; his advisors were Claude Shannon, Robert G. Gallager, Peter Elias and John Wozencraft. Berlekamp taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1964 until 1966, when he became a researcher at Bell Labs. In 1971, Berlekamp returned to Berkeley, where he is currently (as of 2006) a Professor of the Graduate School.
Berlekamp is one of the inventors of the Welch-Berlekamp and Berlekamp-Massey algorithm, which are used to implement Reed-Solomon error correction. In the mid-1980s, he was president of Cyclotomics, Inc., a corporation which developed error-correcting code technology. With John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy, he co-authored Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, leading to his recognition as one of the founders of combinatorial game theory. He has studied various games, including Fox and Geese (Fox games), dots and boxes, and, especially, Go. Berlekamp co-authored a book with David Wolfe, Mathematical Go (ISBN 1-56881-032-6), which describes methods for analyzing certain classes of Go endgames.
Outside of mathematics and computer science, Berlekamp has also experienced tremendous success in money management. In 1986, on behalf of Axcom Trading Advisors, a futures trading company, Berlekamp began information-theoretic studies of commodity and financial futures. In 1989, Berlekamp purchased a majority interest in Axcom. After the firm's futures trading algorithms were rewritten, Axcom's flagship fund had a return (in 1990) of 55%, net of all management fees and transaction costs. Today, this fund is known as the Medallion Fund and is managed by James Harris Simons and his Renaissance Technologies Corporation.
Berlekamp and his wife Jennifer have two daughters and a son and live in Piedmont, California.
[edit] Selected publications
- The Dots and Boxes Game, A. K. Peters Ltd., 2000.
- Algebraic Coding Theory, McGraw-Hill, 1968; revised ed., Aegean Park Press, 1984.
- Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, with John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy, Academic Press, 1982, 2 vols.; 2nd ed., A. K. Peters Ltd., 4 vols., 2001–2004.
- Mathematical Go, with David Wolfe, A. K. Peters Ltd., 1994.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Elwyn Berlekamp home page at the University of California, Berkeley.
- Elwyn Berlekamp at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
Categories: 1940 births | 20th century mathematicians | 21st century mathematicians | American mathematicians | Game theorists | Information theorists | Putnam Fellows | Members and associates of the United States National Academy of Sciences | Erdős number 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni | University of California, Berkeley faculty | Living people
