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Honoree
Andrew Viterbi
With
our experience as children escaping virulent European Anti-Semitism and as
uprooted young refugees brought to America, in the ensuing half a century we
have fulfilled the immigrant’s dream of acceptance, achievement and the
establishment of roots by creating a multi-generational close-knit family.
—Erna and Andrew Viterbi, Book of Life Inscription, Jewish Community
Foundation, December 2001
Honored by Irvin & Jacqueline Jacobs, Del
Mar,
California, September 12, 2005 Articles
about Andrew Viterbi
I choose to honor Andrew Viterbi, co-founder
of the communications giant Qualcomm, a major San Diego industry. An Italian
Jewish four-year old refugee immigrant to this country in 1939, just days before
the outbreak of World War II, he attended MIT and
later earned a Ph.D in electrical engineering from USC in 1962. He has
taught at UCLA, UCSD, the Technion, and USC. To the latter, he and his wife Erna
donated this year $52 million to its School of Engineering. In 1966, while
pre-occupied and doodling during a family Purim celebration, he invented the
Viterbi algorithm. This system allowed the accurate and rapid decoding of
numerous overlapping electromagnetic signals, a groundbreaking mathematical
formula for eliminating signal interference. Today it is embedded in most
cell phones and, I might add, also imprinted on USC T-shirts. Later
contributions by Viterbi have further advanced radio communications. A former
president of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego, Viterbi is proud as
well to have served as president of Congregation Beth El in La Jolla and even
prouder that his son, Alan, holds the same post today. Viterbi has played a
major role in aiding Jewish institutions in the San Diego area and in Israel.
Until his mega-gift to USC, it is estimated that he assigned 60 percent of his
total giving to Jewish causes and 40 percent to general ones. Jewish causes
include the San Diego Jewish Academy, the United Jewish Federation Building,
named in honor of his wife's parents, and the Technion in Haifa and various
start-up companies in Israel. Other civic causes include public radio station
KPBS, MIT, and UCLA.
—Irvin H. Jacobs, MD, MPH, Del Mar, California, October 28, 2005