Professor Emeritus Norman Abramson receives the 2007 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
Dr. Norman Abramson is the recipient of the 2007 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal with the following citation:
"For contributions to the development of modern data networks
through fundamental work in random multiple access."
Dr. Abramson created the Aloha protocol now widely used for nearly all forms of wireless communications. He is the founder and CTO of skyware, a wireless communications company. From 1968 to 1996, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering and a Professor of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Hawaii. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii. He has also been a member of the faculty at Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard and MIT. At the University of Hawaii he served as Chair of the Information and Computer Sciences Department and as Director of the ALOHA System research project. He directed the effort at the University of Hawaii which lead to the construction and operation of the ALOHANET, the first wireless packet network.
He has served as Consulting Expert in Communication Systems, Data networks and Satellite Networks for ITU (Geneva), UNESCO (Paris) and the UNDP (Jakarta). He is the recipient of prestigious international awards including the 1995 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award and the 2000 Technology Award from the Eduard Rhein Foundation. He holds eight U.S. and international patens.
He received an A.B. degree in physics from Harvard, an M.S. degree in physics from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.