InterViews

Andrew Viterbi
computer and information sciences
(recorded in 2005)

Listen to the Interview (mp3, 40mb)
(42 minutes)

Born in Bergamo, Italy, Andrew Viterbi came to the United States when he was just a boy. His family eventually settled in Boston, and he attended public schools there, including the renowned Boston Latin School. Developing an interest in engineering as a preteen, he studied electronics and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After graduation, he moved to California, where he earned a Ph.D. in digital communications from the University of Southern California, taught communications theory at the University of California, Los Angeles, and consulted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology.

In 1968 he cofounded Linkabit Corporation and in 1985 QUALCOMM Inc. He is also the president of the venture capital investment fund The Viterbi Group, LLC. A pioneer in the field of communications, Andrew Viterbi is the creator of the Viterbi algorithm, which is used by four international standards for digital cellular telephony. He is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. In 2004, the University of Southern California’s School of Engineering was renamed the Viterbi School of Engineering in his honor.

Listen to the Interview (requires free RealPlayer software):

 TRACK 1 Proximity and Timing
By the time he went to college, Andrew Viterbi knew he wanted to become an engineer. No one in his family had been in engineering, yet Viterbi was influenced by the close proximity of his home to MIT. Earning high marks in school, he received a scholarship to MIT, where he was introduced to statistical communications theory.

While at MIT, Viterbi did cooperative work with industry on early computers. Although he found this cutting-edge experience helpful and received good offers from several places, he was attracted to California and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His timing couldn’t have been better, as three months after his arrival, the Russian satellite Sputnik was launched, and JPL got the contract from the Army to put up a small satellite. He was a junior member of the team that provided telemetry for the first successful U.S. satellite program, Explorer I. It was the beginning of the satellite revolution. (9 minutes)

 TRACK 2 From Proof to Product 
It was not clear that an algorithm for efficient transmission of information from large distances would have wide applicability in industry; it was simply a step in the proof of some theories. The possibilities opened up once people saw the algorithm as a search through a Markov chain—an optimal search for the most likely path. Anything that could be mapped as a Markov process was fair game, including magnetic and optical recording, speech recognition, and even DNA sequencing. The Viterbi algorithm turned out to have legs. (7 minutes)

 TRACK 3 An Innovator in the Evolution of Modern Communications
In the late 1960's, the exciting possibilities of a burgeoning field led Viterbi and two colleagues to start a company called Linkabit, located in a dentist’s office at the edge of the UCLA campus. The firm grew and widened in scope, and in 1980 Viterbi and his colleagues sold Linkabit to a larger company. Viterbi stayed on for some time, as the company developed satellite products for commercial markets. He worked initially on satellites for remote oil exploration, and later also provided products for corporations like Holiday Inn and Wal-Mart. The company also worked on early satellite television.

 In 1985 Viterbi and his colleagues left the company to found QUALCOMM, which today designs and supplies wide range of communications products and services. At first the company worked with the military, particularly in new areas, such as low-orbiting satellites. Its scope soon widened. One of the important early developments was a very small satellite dish designed for trucking companies. At that time, mobile cellular technology was not available, and the satellite system was state of the art. (10 minutes)

 TRACK 4 Worldwide Reach
In the late 1980's, cellular technology was going digital, and Viterbi was ready. Spread-spectrum radio signals, part of his work in other areas, seemed to be the right approach. What he called code-division multiple access (CDMA) increased the efficiency of the transmission by a factor of ten.

In the highly competitive high-tech world, it took Viterbi and his colleagues about three years of demonstrations to persuade the industry to adopt the CDMA approach to cellular communications. At this time, most U.S. carriers had already selected another technology. What clinched the success of their system was its acceptance in Asia, mainly Korea. It is estimated that there are about 1.5 billion cell phones in use today—one for every four people on the planet. Of these phones, about 240 million use CDMA technology. (7 minutes)

 TRACK 5 Assessing the Past, Envisioning the Future
Viterbi’s early attraction to the excitement of the communications field has not wavered over the years. Some of the technologies that have been developed, such as satellite television, came as no surprise; Viterbi himself had written and presented an early paper on it. The worldwide expansion of cellular phones, however, was much less foreseeable, partly because they started out as such large and bulky devices. Still, Moore’s law—the doubling of data density approximately every 18 months—could have predicted their development.

Viterbi is concerned about the future of science and technology in this country. When he was young, Sputnik, the cold war, and fear of Russia were a great incentive for bright young people to go into science and technology. That motivating factor is now gone, students are not choosing science and engineering studies or careers, and the brain drain that once benefited U.S. science has reversed direction. Viterbi sees the current times as troublesome for the United States, which is in danger of losing its role as a leader in innovation. (7 minutes)

Last Updated: 10-06-2009