William Lucas Root

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William Lucas Root (born October 6, 1919 in Des Moines , Iowa , † April 22, 2007 ) was an American mathematician and engineer.

Root studied electrical engineering at Iowa State University with a bachelor's degree in 1940 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a master's degree in 1943. After military service in the Second World War as an officer in the United States Marine Corps , he returned to MIT which he received in 1952 under Warren Ambrose in mathematics (H-Systems and Rings of Operators). He then went to the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT, where he headed the analysis group from 1959 to 1961. In 1962 he became professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan (later also in the faculty of electrical engineering and computer science), where he retired in 1986. In 1968 he headed the newly founded cross-faculty program for computer science and control theory at the university.

He is known for his contributions to the strict mathematical foundation of statistical communication theory (information theory), including a textbook from 1958 and an article from 1960 on the identification and parameter estimation of signals in noise. With his colleagues Wilbur Davenport, Edward J. Kelly, Irving S. Reed and Richard P. Wishner, he undertook extensive work in the 1950s as part of the program for defense against intercontinental bombers for the detection of signals in radar noise, with application in semi-automated air defense systems, for example in the Cape Cod system (as part of the SAGE project with data processing initially in the Whirlwind computer) or the automatic alarm installed in the Distant Early Warning Line of a radar chain in the Arctic. A new radar (Sentinel) was developed for this purpose at the Lincoln Laboratory in 1954.

In 1986 he received the Claude E. Shannon Award . He was a fellow of the IEEE .

Fonts

  • with Wilbur B. Davenport: Introduction to the theory of random signals and noise, McGraw Hill 1958, IEEE Press 1987
  • with Tom Stephen Pitcher: Some remarks on statistical detection. IRE Transactions on Information Theory, Volume 1, 1955, pp. 33-38
  • with Irving S. Reed, Edward Joseph Kelly Detection of Radar Echos in Noise , Lincoln Laboratory, MIT 1957
  • with Reed: The detection of radar echoes in noise, Part 1,2, SIAM Journal, Volume 8, June 1960, pp. 309-341, 481-507
  • Communications through Unspecified Additive Noise, Information and Control, Volume 4, 1961, pp. 15-29
  • with Patrick A. Kelly: Stability in linear detection, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Volume 33, 1987, pp. 36-46
  • with Patrick A. Kelly: Stability in linear estimation, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Volume 38, 1992, pp. 39-49
  • Remarks, mostly historical, on signal detection and signal parameter estimation, Proc. of the IEEE, Vol. 75, 1987, No. 11, pp. 1446-1457

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ William Lucas Root in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)Template: MathGenealogyProject / Maintenance / id used
  3. ↑ Donald L. Clark Early Advances in Radar Technology for Aircraft Detection , Lincoln Laboratory Journal, Volume 12, 2000, p. 161, pdf ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and still Not checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ll.mit.edu
personal data
SURNAME Root, William Lucas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH October 6, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Des Moines
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 2007