Also known as: Richard Hamming

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) was an American mathematician who created the first practical error-correcting codes — the Hamming codes — launching the field of coding theory.¹

Hamming created the first practical error-correcting codes, the ancestors of the FEC used in digital radio.

Life and work

Frustrated by computers halting on detected errors, Hamming devised codes that could correct single-bit errors automatically, and defined the “Hamming distance” measuring how many bits differ between codewords.¹

Contribution

His work began the discipline of forward error correction on which all reliable digital radio depends.

Legacy

Hamming codes and their descendants protect data across radio, storage, and networking.

Sources

1. Richard Hamming — Wikipedia, for biography and his creation of the first practical error-correcting codes. ↩ ↩²

See also

• Hamming code
• Forward error correction (FEC)
• Golay code

Learn it step by step

• The demodulation pipeline