James Massey

American information theorist, cryptographer, and scholar (1934 – 2013)

For other people named James Massey, see James Massey (disambiguation).

James Lee Massey (February 11, 1934 – June 16, 2013)[1] was an American information theorist and cryptographer, Professor Emeritus of Digital Technology at ETH Zurich. His notable work includes the application of the Berlekamp–Massey algorithm to linear codes, the design of the block ciphers IDEA (with Xuejia Lai, based on the Lai-Massey scheme) and SAFER, and the Massey-Omura cryptosystem (with Jim K. Omura).

## Biography

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Massey was born in Wauseon, Ohio. As a child, after the death of his father in Ohio, he moved with his mother and brother to Mendota, Illinois. At age 14, his family moved to Ottawa, Illinois. After graduating from St. Bede Academy, he entered the University of Notre Dame. He received a B.S. in electrical engineering from Notre Dame in 1956 and was granted an NSF Fellowship. After three years of military service, he began graduate studies in 1959 at MIT, where he concentrated on coding theory and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1962, with John Wozencraft as his advisor. He returned to Notre Dame, where he taught electrical engineering until 1977, publishing significant research in convolutional codes, frame synchronization techniques and feedback-assisted communication. After a brief period at UCLA, Massey accepted a position at ETH Zurich in 1980. He remained there until his retirement in 1998.

Massey died of colon cancer on June 16, 2013 in Copenhagen, Denmark.[1]

## Honors and awards

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* IEEE Fellow, 1971
* Baker Prize, 1987
* Claude E. Shannon Award, 1988
* IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, 1992
* Marconi Prize, 1999
* Member of the National Academy of Engineering
* Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences[2]
* IACR Fellow, 2009[3]

## References

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1. ^ a b Obituary at IEEE Information Theory Society
2. ^ "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: James L. Massey". Archived from the original on August 22, 2010. Retrieved October 8, 2010.
3. ^ IACR Fellow citation

## External links

[edit]

* James Massey's CV at ETH Zurich
* James Massey's bio at IEEE Global History Network
* James Massey at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Awards

Preceded by

C. Chapin Cutler, John O. Limb and Arun Netravali

|  IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
1992  | Succeeded by

Donald Cox

* v
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Claude E. Shannon Award

* 1972 Claude E. Shannon
* 1973
* 1974 David S. Slepian
* 1975
* 1976 Robert M. Fano
* 1977 Peter Elias
* 1978 Mark Semenovich Pinsker
* 1979 Jacob Wolfowitz
* 1980
* 1981 W. Wesley Peterson
* 1982 Irving S. Reed
* 1983 Robert G. Gallager
* 1984
* 1985 Solomon W. Golomb
* 1986 William Lucas Root
* 1987
* 1988 James Massey
* 1989
* 1990 Thomas M. Cover
* 1991 Andrew Viterbi
* 1992
* 1993 Elwyn Berlekamp
* 1994 Aaron D. Wyner
* 1995 George David Forney
* 1996 Imre Csiszár
* 1997 Jacob Ziv
* 1998 Neil Sloane
* 1999 Tadao Kasami
* 2000 Thomas Kailath
* 2001 Jack Keil Wolf
* 2002 Toby Berger
* 2003 Lloyd R. Welch
* 2004 Robert McEliece
* 2005 Richard Blahut
* 2006 Rudolf Ahlswede
* 2007 Sergio Verdú
* 2008 Robert M. Gray
* 2009 Jorma Rissanen
* 2010 Te Sun Han
* 2011 Shlomo Shamai (Shitz)
* 2012 Abbas El Gamal
* 2013 Katalin Marton
* 2014 János Körner
* 2015 Robert Calderbank
* 2016 Alexander Holevo
* 2017 David Tse
* 2018 Gottfried Ungerboeck
* 2019 Erdal Arıkan
* 2020 Charles Bennett
* 2021 Alon Orlitsky
* 2022 Raymond W. Yeung
* 2023 Rüdiger Urbanke
* 2024 Andrew Barron
* 2025 Peter Shor

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany
* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Netherlands
* Israel

Academics|

* Mathematics Genealogy Project
* zbMATH
* MathSciNet

People|

* DDB

Other|

* IdRef

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