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Robert Fano
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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]
Key Information
Early life and education
[edit]Fano was born in Turin, Italy in 1917[3][4] to a Jewish family and grew up in Turin.[5] Fano's father was the mathematician Gino Fano, his older brother was the physicist Ugo Fano, and Giulio Racah was a cousin.[6] Fano studied engineering as an undergraduate at the School of Engineering of Torino (Politecnico di Torino) until 1939, when he emigrated to the United States as a result of anti-Jewish legislation passed under Benito Mussolini.[7] He received his S.B. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1941, and upon graduation joined the staff of the MIT Radiation Laboratory. After World War II, Fano continued on to complete his Sc.D. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1947. His thesis, titled "Theoretical Limitations on the Broadband Matching of Arbitrary Impedances",[8] was supervised by Ernst Guillemin.
Career
[edit]Fano's career spans three areas, microwave systems, information theory, and computer science.
Fano joined the MIT faculty in 1947 to what was then called the Department of Electrical Engineering. Between 1950 and 1953, he led the Radar Techniques Group at Lincoln Laboratory.[9] In 1954, Fano was made an IEEE Fellow for "contributions in the field of information theory and microwave filters".[10] He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958, to the National Academy of Engineering in 1973, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978.[9][11]
Fano was known principally for his work on information theory. He developed Shannon–Fano coding[12] in collaboration with Claude Shannon, and derived the Fano inequality. He also invented the Fano algorithm and postulated the Fano metric.[13]
In the early 1960s, Fano was involved in the development of time-sharing computers. From 1963 until 1968 Fano served as the founding director of MIT's Project MAC, which evolved to become what is now known as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.[14][15] He also helped to create MIT's original computer science curriculum.
In 1976, Fano received the Claude E. Shannon Award for his work in information theory.[9] In 1977 he was recognized for his contribution to the teaching of electrical engineering with the IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal.[16]
Fano retired from active teaching in 1984,[17] and died on 13 July 2016 at the age of 98.[17]
Bibliography
[edit]In addition to his work in information theory, Fano also published articles and books about microwave systems,[18] electromagnetism, network theory, and engineering education. His longer publications include:
- "The Theory of Microwave Filters" and "The Design of Microwave Filters", chapters 9 and 10 in George L. Ragan, ed., Microwave Transmission Circuits, vol. 9 in the Radiation Laboratory Series (with A. W. Lawson, 1948).
- Electromagnetic Energy Transmission and Radiation (with Lan Jen Chu and Richard B. Adler, 1960).
- Electromagnetic Fields, Energy, and Forces (with Chu and Adler, 1960).
- Fano, Robert (1961). Transmission of information: a statistical theory of communications. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-56169-3. OCLC 804123877.
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
References
[edit]- ^ Fano, Robert M. "The Transmission of Information : Parts [I] and II (Technical Reports 65 and 149)".
- ^ Markoff, John (13 March 2008). "Joseph Weizenbaum Dies; Computer Pioneer Was 85". The New York Times. p. 22. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
- ^ Seising, Rudolf (8 August 2007). Fuzzification of systems: the genesis of fuzzy set theory and its initial applications - developments up to the 1970s. Springer. p. 33. ISBN 978-3-540-71794-2. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
- ^ "United States Public Records Index". FamilySearch. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
- ^ Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck? (Part Five) BY ERROL MORRIS JUNE 23, 2011, New York Times
- ^ The New York Times biographical service. New York Times & Arno Press. 2001. p. 297.
- ^ Morris, Errol (23 June 2011). "Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck? (Part Five)". Opinionator. The New York Times. Retrieved 14 March 2012.
- ^ "Theoretical Limitations on the Broadband Matching of Arbitrary Impedances - MIT Technical Report no. 41" (PDF). MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. 2 January 1948. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
- ^ a b c Lee, John A. N. (1995). International biographical dictionary of computer pioneers. Taylor & Francis US. p. 296. ISBN 978-1-884964-47-3.
- ^ "IEEE Fellows - F". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
- ^ Dates of election per the American Academy and National Academies membership lists.
- ^ Salomon, David (2007). Data compression: the complete reference. Springer. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-84628-602-5.
- ^ Fano, Robert M. (April 1963). "A heuristic discussion of probabilistic decoding". IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 9 (2): 64–73. doi:10.1109/tit.1963.1057827.
- ^ Wildes, Karl L.; Lindgren, Nilo A. (1985). A century of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, 1882-1982. MIT Press. pp. 348–. ISBN 978-0-262-23119-0. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
- ^ Belzer, Jack; Holzman, Albert G.; Kent, Allen (1 May 1979). Encyclopedia of computer science and technology: Pattern recognition to reliability of computer systems. CRC Press. p. 339. ISBN 978-0-8247-2262-3. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
- ^ "IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal Recipients" (PDF). IEEE. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 June 2010. Retrieved 9 December 2014.
- ^ a b Conner-Simons, Adam; Gordon, Rachel (15 July 2016). "Robert Fano, computing pioneer and founder of CSAIL, dies at 98". MIT News Office. Archived from the original on 16 July 2016. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
- ^ Lee, Thomas H. (2004). Planar microwave engineering: a practical guide to theory, measurement, and circuits. Cambridge University Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-521-83526-8.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Robert Fano.
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- Oral history interview with Robert M. Fano 20 April 1989. Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota. Fano discusses his move to computer science from information theory and his interaction with the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Topics include: computing research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the work of J.C.R. Licklider at the Information Processing Techniques Office of ARPA; time-sharing and computer networking research; Project MAC; computer science education; CTSS development; System Development Corporation (SDC); the development of ARPANET; and a comparison of ARPA, National Science Foundation, and Office of Naval Research computer science funding.
- Video of Robert Fano on YouTube from 1964, demonstrating the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS).
- Robert Fano at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Robert Fano
View on Grokipediafrom Grokipedia
Early Life and Education
Childhood and Family Background
Robert Mario Fano was born on November 11, 1917, in Turin, Italy, to Jewish parents Gino Fano, a prominent mathematician, and Rosetta Fano.[5][1][5] Gino Fano, renowned for his contributions to projective geometry including the discovery of the Fano plane—a fundamental structure in finite geometry consisting of seven points and seven lines—was a professor of mathematics at the University of Turin.[6][7] The family hailed from a wealthy Jewish lineage originally from Mantua, providing a stable and intellectually stimulating environment in the Piedmont region's capital.[8] Growing up in this academic household, Fano was deeply influenced by his father's rigorous approach to mathematics and science, which instilled in him an early appreciation for logical reasoning and analytical thinking.[1] Gino's position at the University of Turin exposed the family to Europe's vibrant intellectual circles, including prominent figures in mathematics and engineering who frequented academic gatherings in the city.[7] This environment nurtured Fano's budding interests, blending his father's mathematical legacy with practical applications in engineering. His older brother, Ugo Fano, later pursued a distinguished career in physics, further exemplifying the family's tradition of scholarly excellence in the sciences.[9] Fano received his early education in Turin, attending local schools that emphasized classical and scientific subjects before enrolling in the School of Engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin around age 18, where he began studies in electrical engineering.[3][5] These formative years, marked by the intellectual fervor of interwar Italy, laid the groundwork for his future pursuits, though they were soon overshadowed by the rising tide of anti-Semitism under Mussolini's regime.[5]Emigration and Early Studies
In 1939, at the age of 21, Robert Fano emigrated from Italy to the United States alone, fleeing the anti-Semitic racial laws enacted under Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime that increasingly targeted Jewish families like his own.[1] With limited financial resources and facing the uncertainties of wartime Europe, Fano undertook the journey amid growing political persecution, leaving behind his studies at the Politecnico di Torino.[2] This decision was driven by the need to secure his future in a safer environment, as the laws barred Jews from higher education and professional opportunities in Italy.[8] Upon arriving in New York in October 1939, Fano applied to several American universities and was admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he began undergraduate studies in electrical engineering in February 1940 despite the disruptions of World War II, including resource shortages and accelerated academic demands.[5] He earned his S.B. degree in 1941, a testament to his resilience amid personal hardships such as language barriers—his primary tongue being Italian—and ongoing economic difficulties that tested his determination.[2] These early experiences in the U.S. forged Fano's adaptability, shaping his approach to future academic and professional pursuits.[7]Graduate Work at MIT
In 1941, shortly after earning his S.B. in electrical engineering from MIT, Robert Fano enrolled in the institute's graduate program in the same field and joined the MIT staff as an assistant.[10] His studies were soon intertwined with wartime efforts, as he became a member of the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where he contributed to microwave research on radar systems, effectively pausing formal academic progress until after World War II.[2] This period provided early exposure to emerging areas in communications engineering, including antenna and circuit design challenges under practical constraints.[1] Fano resumed and completed his graduate work postwar, receiving his Sc.D. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1947.[2] His doctoral thesis, titled "Theoretical Limitations on the Broadband Matching of Arbitrary Impedances," was supervised by Ernst A. Guillemin, a prominent figure in network synthesis and circuit theory at MIT.[11] The work systematically investigated the fundamental bounds on matching an arbitrary load impedance to a generator using lossless reactive networks, employing integral constraints derived from network theory to quantify achievable performance over a specified frequency band.[7] A core concept in Fano's thesis addresses broadband matching constraints, which limit how effectively power can be transferred from a source to a load across a wide frequency range due to the reactive nature of matching networks.[11] These limits have significant implications for antenna design, where frequency-varying impedances hinder efficient operation in broadband applications like radar and communications systems, often requiring trade-offs between bandwidth and reflection losses.[1] Central to this analysis is the reflection coefficient , which measures the fraction of incident power reflected at the load interface and is given by where is the load impedance and is the characteristic impedance of the transmission line or generator.[11] To derive this, consider a voltage wave incident on the load: the total voltage at the interface is , where is the incident amplitude and with the reflected amplitude. The corresponding current is , since the reflected wave propagates oppositely. The load impedance is then . Solving for yields the expression above, revealing that mismatches () inevitably produce reflections, with bounding the minimum achievable over bandwidth as per Fano's integrals.[11]Professional Career
Wartime Contributions and Early MIT Role
During World War II, Robert Fano served at MIT's Radiation Laboratory (Rad Lab) from 1941 to 1945, where he contributed to the development of radar systems for the Allied forces.[7] His work focused on microwave circuits and components, including signal processing techniques essential for radar performance.[1] Specifically, Fano designed various microwave filters and explored broadbanding methods to enhance component efficiency, co-authoring chapters on these topics in Volume 9 of the Rad Lab Series, Microwave Transmission Circuits, published in 1948.[12] These efforts addressed fundamental bandwidth limitations in two-terminal networks and antennas, improving radar signal handling under wartime constraints.[13] One key innovation during this period involved advancements in broadband radar antennas, which Fano investigated through theoretical limitations on impedance matching to optimize signal transmission across wider frequency ranges.[1] This work directly impacted signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancements, a critical metric for radar detection reliability, given by the formula: where is the received signal power, is Boltzmann's constant, is the system temperature, is the bandwidth, and is the noise figure representing amplifier degradation.[13] By minimizing through improved filters, Fano's designs reduced noise interference, enabling clearer pulse radar signals for military applications.[12] After the war, Fano returned to MIT in 1947 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering, initially concentrating on communication systems to build on his microwave expertise.[2] His teaching and research emphasized network theory and electromagnetism, laying groundwork for post-war advancements in electronics. From 1950 to 1953, he led MIT's Lincoln Laboratory Radar Techniques Group, where he advanced pulse radar methodologies and noise reduction strategies to refine detection accuracy in emerging defense systems.[1]Faculty Research and Teaching
In 1956, Robert Fano was promoted to full professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering.[14] As a faculty member, he taught advanced courses in electromagnetics, communication theory, and systems engineering, drawing on his expertise to integrate theoretical foundations with practical applications in electrical engineering.[1] His electromagnetics course, initiated in the early 1950s, emphasized the interplay between field theory and circuit concepts, later formalized in his co-authored textbook Electromagnetic Fields, Energy, and Forces (1960).[15] In communication theory, Fano's graduate-level instruction explored statistical models of information transmission, influencing the development of key concepts in the field.[16] Fano played a pivotal role in shaping MIT's graduate programs in applied mathematics and engineering during the 1950s and 1960s, helping to expand interdisciplinary curricula that bridged electrical engineering with computational and systems analysis.[7] These efforts mentored hundreds of students, including notable figures such as David A. Huffman, who developed the Huffman coding algorithm as a term paper in Fano's 1951 information theory class—a seminal contribution to data compression still widely used today.[16] Through his teaching and program development, Fano fostered a generation of engineers equipped to tackle complex problems in emerging technologies. Fano's mid-career research built on his 1947 doctoral thesis, "Theoretical Limitations on the Broadband Matching of Arbitrary Impedances," which established fundamental bounds on matching networks for broadband applications.[11] He extended this work in network theory to multiport systems, analyzing interactions in filters and transmission lines to optimize performance across frequency ranges. In the 1950s, Fano published influential papers on electromagnetic fields, with his broadband matching theory providing foundational constraints that influenced later microwave engineering developments, including the use of scattering parameters (S-parameters). These parameters characterize wave propagation in networks by relating incident waves to reflected waves at each port, with the S-matrix defined as , where encapsulates the network's response. For instance, the reflection coefficient at port 1 is given by when other ports are matched, enabling precise design of microwave components like filters by quantifying mismatches and power transfer.[17] This framework, rooted in Fano's broadband matching theory, provided essential tools for handling complex impedances in transmission lines and multiport filters, influencing subsequent developments in RF systems.[1]Leadership in Computing Projects
In 1963, Robert Fano was appointed as the founding director of Project MAC at MIT, a major research initiative funded by a $2 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aimed at advancing time-sharing computer systems to enable multiple simultaneous users.[18][2] Under his leadership from 1963 to 1968, the project focused on developing innovative software and hardware architectures that would transform computing from batch processing to interactive, multi-user environments, building on the earlier Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS).[19] Fano's vision emphasized creating a "computer utility" accessible to a broad community of researchers, fostering collaborative experimentation in fields like artificial intelligence and systems design.[20] A cornerstone achievement during Fano's directorship was the development of the Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) operating system, a pioneering time-sharing platform designed for high reliability and security in multi-user settings.[2][21] Multics introduced concepts such as hierarchical file systems, dynamic resource allocation, and protected memory, which influenced subsequent operating systems like Unix. Fano oversaw the integration of these efforts with hardware like the GE-645 computer, enabling dozens of users to interact productively without significant delays. To evaluate performance, Project MAC researchers applied basic queuing theory, modeling the system as a queue where arrival rates of user requests compete for CPU service; the overall throughput could be approximated as the product of the number of active users and the effective CPU utilization per user, highlighting how utilization above 70-80% led to exponential increases in response times due to contention.[22] Fano strongly advocated for multidisciplinary approaches in computing research, bridging electrical engineering, computer science, and related disciplines to address complex challenges in interactive systems.[2] This integration was evident in Project MAC's interdepartmental structure, which drew faculty and students from MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Sloan School of Management, promoting cross-pollination of ideas in areas like human-computer interaction and systems engineering.[19] His efforts helped establish computing as a core academic field at MIT, moving beyond siloed engineering projects. Key outcomes of Fano's leadership included early experiments in networked computing, such as resource-sharing demonstrations that connected multiple machines for distributed processing, laying conceptual groundwork for wide-area networks like ARPANET.[10] These initiatives demonstrated the feasibility of linking time-sharing systems across locations, influencing DARPA's subsequent networking programs by showing how interactive access could scale through interconnection. In 1968, upon Fano's departure, Project MAC transitioned under new leadership toward a more permanent institutional framework, eventually evolving into the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science in 1975—a direct precursor to the modern Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[2][21]Scientific Contributions
Foundations in Information Theory
In the late 1940s, following Claude Shannon's foundational 1948 paper, Robert Fano advanced information theory at MIT, with key contributions to source coding and the application of entropy measures in communication systems.[7] This work built on Shannon's 1948 paper introducing the field, with Fano providing key insights into source coding and channel capacity limits during his early research at the Radiation Laboratory. Fano co-developed the Shannon-Fano coding scheme in 1948, a variable-length prefix code designed for lossless data compression that assigns shorter codes to more probable symbols. The method begins by sorting symbols in decreasing order of probability, then recursively partitioning them into two groups with approximately equal total probability, assigning binary digits (0 or 1) to each group as prefixes. This top-down approach ensures the codes form a prefix-free set, preventing ambiguity in decoding. The average code length satisfies , where is the entropy of the source, approaching the theoretical minimum for efficient compression. In 1949, Fano described a practical algorithm for constructing such prefix codes in his technical report "The Transmission of Information," refining the approach by emphasizing balanced probability splits to minimize variance in code lengths. Unlike Shannon's earlier block-coding approaches in his 1948 paper, which relied on fixed-length extensions and were less efficient for variable probabilities, Fano's technique achieves near-optimal performance with lower computational overhead for small alphabets, serving as a direct precursor to Huffman's 1952 bottom-up method. The algorithm's steps can be outlined in pseudocode as follows:function shannonFanoCode(symbols, probs, prefix=""):
if length(symbols) == 1:
assign code = prefix to symbols[0]
return
sort symbols and probs in decreasing order of probs
cumulative_prob = 0
split_index = 1
while split_index < [length](/page/Length)(symbols) and cumulative_prob < 0.5:
cumulative_prob += probs[split_index]
split_index += 1
# First group: symbols[0 to split_index-1] with prefix + "0"
shannonFanoCode(symbols[0:split_index], probs[0:split_index], prefix + "0")
# Second group: symbols[split_index:end] with prefix + "1"
shannonFanoCode(symbols[split_index:], probs[split_index:], prefix + "1")
function shannonFanoCode(symbols, probs, prefix=""):
if length(symbols) == 1:
assign code = prefix to symbols[0]
return
sort symbols and probs in decreasing order of probs
cumulative_prob = 0
split_index = 1
while split_index < [length](/page/Length)(symbols) and cumulative_prob < 0.5:
cumulative_prob += probs[split_index]
split_index += 1
# First group: symbols[0 to split_index-1] with prefix + "0"
shannonFanoCode(symbols[0:split_index], probs[0:split_index], prefix + "0")
# Second group: symbols[split_index:end] with prefix + "1"
shannonFanoCode(symbols[split_index:], probs[split_index:], prefix + "1")