25 Facts About Richard Hamming

Richard Wesley Hamming was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications.

Richard Hamming's contributions include the Hamming code, the Hamming window, Hamming numbers, sphere-packing, Hamming graph concepts, and the Hamming distance.

Richard Hamming left to join the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1946.

Richard Hamming delivered his last lecture in December 1997, just a few weeks before he died from a heart attack on January 7,1998.

Richard Wesley Hamming was born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 11,1915, the son of Richard J Hamming, a credit manager, and Mabel G Redfield.

Richard Hamming grew up in Chicago, where he attended Crane Technical High School and Crane Junior College.

Richard Hamming initially wanted to study engineering, but money was scarce during the Great Depression, and the only scholarship offer he received came from the University of Chicago, which had no engineering school.

Richard Hamming later considered this a fortunate turn of events.

Richard Hamming's thesis was an extension of Trjitzinsky's work in that area.

Richard Hamming looked at Green's function and further developed Jacob Tamarkin's methods for obtaining characteristic solutions.

Richard Hamming married Wanda Little, a fellow student, on September 5,1942, immediately after she was awarded her own Master of Arts in English literature.

Richard Hamming remained at Los Alamos until 1946, when he accepted a post at the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

At the Bell Labs Richard Hamming shared an office for a time with Claude Shannon.

Shannon, Ling, McMillan and Richard Hamming came to call themselves the Young Turks.

Richard Hamming set himself the task of solving this problem, which he realised would have an enormous range of applications.

Richard Hamming thereby created a family of mathematical error-correcting codes, which are called Richard Hamming codes.

The Richard Hamming bound, known as the sphere-packing or volume bound is a limit on the parameters of an arbitrary block code.

Richard Hamming did extensive research into digital filters, devising a new filter, the Hamming window, and eventually writing an entire book on the subject, Digital Filters.

Richard Hamming was promoted to management positions several times, but always managed to make these only temporary.

Richard Hamming served as president of the Association for Computing Machinery from 1958 to 1960.

Richard Hamming therefore resolved to retire in 1976, after thirty years.

Richard Hamming gave up research, and concentrated on teaching and writing books.

Richard Hamming attempted to rectify the situation with a new text, Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics.

Richard Hamming became Professor Emeritus in June 1997, and delivered his last lecture in December 1997, just a few weeks before his death from a heart attack on January 7,1998.

Richard Hamming's final recorded lecture series is maintained by Naval Postgraduate School along with ongoing work that preserves his insights and extends his legacy.