Photo: Thane Plambeck from Palo Alto, California / CC BY 2.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Elwyn Berlekamp is the sort of genius whose fingerprints are everywhere and whose name almost no one knows, which is exactly why he fascinates me. His work in coding theory quietly underpins the error correction that keeps our phones, networks, and storage honest, an invisible scaffolding holding up modern life. Yet the same MIT-trained Berkeley professor poured equal brilliance into combinatorial game theory, finding rigor and joy in play. Crowned with the Shannon Award and Hamming Medal, he sat at the absolute summit of information theory. He died in 2019, and I think too few people paused to thank a man who literally helped the digital world function.
Overview
Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Berlekamp was widely known for his work in computer science, coding theory and combinatorial game theory.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp
- Name (Japanese)
- エルウィン・バーレカンプ
- Reading
- えるうぃん・ばーれかんぷ
- Born
- September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Virgo / Dragon
- Origin
- Dover, Ohio, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- mathematician / computer scientist / university teacher
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Private
Awards & achievements
- 1991 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1993 Claude E. Shannon Award
- 1990 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award
- 2013 Fellow of the American Mathematical Society
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Mathematician — see all → · Computer scientist — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.