Irwin M. Jacobs

Qualcomm. Jacobs taught communications theory at MIT and the University of California, San Diego, and co-wrote a standard textbook on it before co-founding Linkabit and then, in 1985, Qualcomm. He pushed code-division multiple access, a technique from military radio research, into commercial mobile networks against heavy industry scepticism. Qualcomm's model of licensing its patents to phone makers made it hugely profitable and drew repeated competition cases.