Richard Hamming

Richard Wesley Hamming (February 11, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American mathematician. His work helped shape computer engineering and telecommunications.

Hamming was born in Chicago. He studied at several universities, including the University of Chicago, the University of Nebraska, and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory. There, he used IBM calculating machines to solve difficult math problems.

In 1946, Hamming joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories. He worked on many important projects there for fifteen years. In 1968, he received the ACM Turing Award, becoming its third winner. He retired in 1976 but continued teaching. He taught at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California as an adjunct professor and senior lecturer in computer science until he passed away in 1998.

Early life

Richard Hamming was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 11, 1915. His father was Dutch, and his mother was a Mayflower descendant. He grew up in Chicago and went to Crane Technical High School and Crane Junior College.

Hamming wanted to study engineering, but during the Great Depression he could only get a scholarship from the University of Chicago, which did not have an engineering school. He decided to study mathematics instead and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1937. He later got a Master of Arts from the University of Nebraska in 1939. He then went to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he completed his Doctor of Philosophy in 1942. He married Wanda Little, a fellow student, in 1942, and they stayed married until his death.

Manhattan Project

During World War II, Richard Hamming worked at the Manhattan Project in the Los Alamos Laboratory with Hans Bethe. He helped program IBM calculating machines to solve hard math problems. His wife Wanda also worked there as a human computer with Edward Teller.

After the war ended in 1946, Hamming went to work at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Even though his job looked simple, he saw important computer tests that changed science.

Bell Laboratories

At Bell Labs, Richard Hamming shared an office with Claude Shannon. The team included smart thinkers like John Tukey and Brockway McMillan. They called themselves the Young Turks because they did things their own way.

Hamming worked on solving problems with early computers. He noticed that small mistakes could cause trouble with data. He created a way to find and fix these mistakes, now called the Hamming distance. This helped make phone calls and computer data more reliable. He also invented special methods to improve how computers process information.

Later life

Hamming was president of the Association for Computing Machinery from 1958 to 1960. He thought computing was important for learning, not just for numbers.

Later, he taught at many universities. These included Stanford University, Stevens Institute of Technology, the City College of New York, the University of California at Irvine, and Princeton University.

In 1976, Hamming went to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He was an adjunct professor and senior lecturer in computer science. He stopped research and focused on teaching and writing books. He wanted to make math more interesting for students. He became Professor Emeritus in 1997 and gave his last lecture in December of that year.

Awards and professional recognition

Richard Hamming received many important awards for his work. In 1968, he was given the Turing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery. In 1988, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal was created in his honor, and he was the first person to receive it. This award is given each year for great work in information sciences, systems, and technology.