William Lucas Root

American information theorist

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William Lucas Root (1919 – April 22, 2007) was a noted American information theorist. As an early pioneer in the field, Root was instrumental in providing a mathematical basis for statistical communication theory.

Root was born in Iowa, receiving his bachelor's degree from Iowa State University in 1940 and master's degree from MIT in 1943, both in electrical engineering. He served as a Marine officer in World War II, in 1952 received his doctorate in mathematics from MIT, and subsequently joined Lincoln Laboratory, serving as head of its analysis group 1959–1961. From 1962 to 1987 he was Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan.

Root was an IEEE Fellow and received the 1986 Claude E. Shannon Award.

## References[edit]

* ITSOC obituary
* University of Michigan obituary
* William Lucas Root at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

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Claude E. Shannon Award

1972–1989|

* 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

1990–1999|

* 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

2000–2009|

* 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

2010–2019|

* 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–present|

* 2020 Charles Bennett
* 2021 Alon Orlitsky
* 2022 Raymond W. Yeung
* 2023 Rüdiger Urbanke
* 2024 Andrew Barron

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF

National|

* Norway
* Israel
* United States
* Japan
* Netherlands

Academics|

* MathSciNet
* Mathematics Genealogy Project
* zbMATH

Other|

* SNAC
* IdRef

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