Robert Fano

Robert Fano
Prof. Fano in his office at MIT in 2012
Born
Roberto Mario Fano

(1917-11-11)11 November 1917
Turin, Italy
Died13 July 2016(2016-07-13) (aged 98)
CitizenshipUnited States of America
Alma materMIT
Known forFano algorithm
Fano metric
Fano's inequality
Shannon–Fano coding
Pointwise mutual information
Founder of Project MAC
RelativesUgo Fano (brother)
AwardsIEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal (1977)
Shannon Award (1976)
IEEE Fellow (1954)
Scientific career
Fieldscomputer science, information theory
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Thesis Theoretical Limitations on the Broadband Matching of Arbitrary Impedances  (1947)
Doctoral advisorErnst Guillemin

Roberto Mario "Robert" Fano (11 November 1917 – 13 July 2016) was an Italian-American computer scientist and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He became a student and working lab partner to Claude Shannon, whom he admired zealously and assisted in the early years of Information Theory.[1][2]

  1. ^ Fano, Robert M. "The Transmission of Information : Parts [I] and II (Technical Reports 65 and 149)".
  2. ^ Markoff, John (13 March 2008). "Joseph Weizenbaum Dies; Computer Pioneer Was 85". The New York Times. p. 22. Retrieved 15 August 2011.