Elwyn R Berlekamp
Born	September 6, 1940 (1940-09-06) (age 69)
Residence	USA
Fields	Information theory, Coding theory, Combinatorial game theory
Alma mater	MIT
Known for	Berlekamp-Massey algorithm

Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (born September 6, 1940 in Dover, Ohio, United States of America) is a professor emeritus of mathematics and EECS at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his work in information theory and combinatorial game theory.^[1][2]

While an undergraduate at MIT, he was a Putnam Fellow in 1961. He completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in electrical engineering in 1962. Continuing his studies at MIT, he finished his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1964; his advisors were Claude Shannon, Robert G. Gallager, Peter Elias and John Wozencraft. Berlekamp taught at the University of California, Berkeley from 1964 until 1966, when he became a researcher at Bell Labs. In 1971, Berlekamp returned to Berkeley, where, as of 2010, he is a Professor of the Graduate School.^[1][2][3] As of 2008, he was the only member of the mathematics faculty who did not possess a degree in mathematics.

Berlekamp is one of the inventors of the Welch-Berlekamp and Berlekamp-Massey algorithms, which are used to implement Reed-Solomon error correction. In the mid-1980s, he was president of Cyclotomics, Inc., a corporation which developed error-correcting code technology.^[1] With John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy, he co-authored Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, leading to his recognition as one of the founders of combinatorial game theory. He has studied various games, including Fox and Geese and other fox games, dots and boxes, and, especially, Go. With David Wolfe, Berlekamp co-authored the book Mathematical Go, which describes methods for analyzing certain classes of Go endgames.

Outside of mathematics and computer science, Berlekamp has also experienced tremendous success in money management. In 1986, on behalf of Axcom Trading Advisors, a futures trading company, Berlekamp began information-theoretic studies of commodity and financial futures. In 1989, Berlekamp owned the largest interest in Axcom. After the firm's futures trading algorithms were rewritten, Axcom's flagship fund had a return (in 1990) of 55%, net of all management fees and transaction costs. Today, this fund is known as the Medallion Fund and is managed by James Harris Simons and his Renaissance Technologies Corporation.^[4]

Berlekamp and his wife Jennifer have two daughters and a son and live in Piedmont, California.

[edit] Selected publications

• Block coding with noiseless feedback. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, 1964.
• Algebraic Coding Theory, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968. Revised ed., Aegean Park Press, 1984, ISBN 0894120638.
• (with John Horton Conway and Richard K. Guy) Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays.

• 1st edition, New York: Academic Press, 2 vols., 1982; vol. 1, hardback: ISBN 0-12-091150-7, paperback: ISBN 0-12-091101-9; vol. 2, hardback: ISBN 0-12-091152-3, paperback: ISBN 0-12-091102-7.
• 2nd edition, Wellesley, Massachusetts: A. K. Peters Ltd., 4 vols., 2001–2004; vol. 1: ISBN 1-56881-130-6; vol. 2: ISBN 1-56881-142-X; vol. 3: ISBN 1-56881-143-8; vol. 4: ISBN 1-56881-144-6.

• (with David Wolfe) Mathematical Go. Wellesley, Massachusetts: A. K. Peters Ltd., 1994. ISBN 1-56881-032-6.
• The Dots-and-Boxes Game. Natick, Massachusetts: A. K. Peters Ltd., 2000. ISBN 1-56881-129-2.

[edit] See also

• Berlekamp's algorithm

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Elwyn Berlekamp home page at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Elwyn Berlekamp at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.