Richard E. Blahut (born June 9, 1937), former chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, is best known for his work in information theory (e.g. the Blahut–Arimoto algorithm used in rate–distortion theory). He received his PhD Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1972. Blahut was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1990 for pioneering work in coherent emitter signal processing and for contributions to information theory and error control codes.

Academic life

Blahut taught at Cornell from 1973 to 1994. He has taught at Princeton University, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the NATO Advanced Study Institute, and has also been a Consulting Professor at the South China University of Technology. He is also the Henryk Magnuski Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is affiliated with the Coordinated Science Laboratory.

Awards and recognition

Books