Andrew Viterbi

Viterbi algorithm, Linkabit and Qualcomm. As a UCLA academic in 1967 Viterbi devised the decoding method that bears his name, now used in satellite links, mobile phones and speech recognition, and chose not to patent it. He co-founded the consultancy Linkabit with Irwin Jacobs and Leonard Kleinrock in 1968, and Qualcomm with Jacobs and others in 1985, where his theory helped make digital mobile networks work.