San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Norman Abramson — tech pioneer
Norman Abramson, a pioneering electrical engineer who paved the way for the development of early wireless technology in the 1970s, died Dec. 1 at his home in San Francisco’s Richmond District at age 88.
His wife, Joan Abramson, described him as “brilliant and kind,” and his son, Mark, said Abramson loved his work, which led to groundbreaking advancements in telecommunications.
Abramson studied at Harvard and UCLA before pursuing a doctorate at Stanford. He taught briefly there, but it was at the University of Hawaii, where he was a professor from 1966 to 1994, that he made an enduring mark on telecommunications.
During the late 1960s, he spearheaded the development of AlohaNet, a broadcast networking technology that is widely credited as being the foundation for wireless communication systems still used today, like cell phones and WiFi. It became operational by 1971. His work was based on the use of random access channel architecture, a gamechanging concept that addressed data networking needs at the time, and it essentially connected the Hawaiian islands through the world’s first wireless packet data network. “Whenever you pick up your telephone and make a phone call or use some other applications from that telephone, the very first thing you do is a packet comes from that telephone and the packet says ‘ ALOHA,’ ” Abramson told the University of Hawaii in October when AlohaNet was recognized as a milestone by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. “I had the feeling back then that the ALOHA channel and the technology that we came up with would be used, but I had no idea it would be used so widely.” Abramson helped move computer communications from wired to wireless. At the time, the networking architecture was mostly based on telephone communications systems, so Abramson’s goal was to “determine those situations where radio communications are preferable to conventional wire communications,” according to IEEE Communications Magazine.
Born in Boston in 1932, Abramson graduated from Harvard University with a physics degree in 1953. He obtained a master’s degree in physics from UCLA in 1955 and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1958. He joined the faculty at Stanford and taught there until 1965, then taught briefly at UC Berkeley before moving to the University of Hawaii, where he taught electrical engineering and computer science until his retirement, according to Mark Abramson. Abramson won numerous awards throughout his career, including the prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 2007, bestowed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for “contributions to the development of modern data networks through fundamental work in random multiple access.”
In 2011, Abramson won the Japanbased lifetime achievement NEC C& C Prize for his invention and commercialization of internet packet access via AlohaNet alongside Robert Metcalfe, an internet pioneer, entrepreneur and professor of innovation at the University of Texas, who was one of the inventors of Ethernet, the computer networking technology that is now nearly ubiquitous. Both won that award together because Metcalfe’s Ethernet invention “was a derivative in some sense from a lower network,” that network being Abramson’s.
“He was a very sweet guy and he was very clever,” Metcalfe said in a telephone interview this month. “He was highly principled and just a nice guy who was generous with his time.”
Metcalfe met Abramson in 1973 and worked with him for a month in Hawaii after he read a paper Abramson wrote in 1970 about randomized retransmissions, a type of protocol between two entities within a communication system.
“I’m an applied mathematician and so when I read his paper, I had just taken a course that helped me understand it. And not only did I understand it, I disagreed with it,” Metcalfe said. “So I called him up to argue about it. He was very kind and so we argued, then he offered to continue the conversation while surfing in Hawaii so I took him up on it.
“He took an interest with making sure my curiosity was satisfied, so he had a certain respect for students. He took care of students. I was a Harvard student, but he still helped me.”
Abramson also inspired Metcalfe to revise and finish his doctoral dissertation for Harvard.
Metcalfe said his initial dissertation was rejected by the university because it needed an additional mathematical chapter to satisfy the dissertation’s requirements.
“So he provided that by teaching me his math, the math of randomized retransmissions, and I was able to elaborate on that in a chapter of my dissertation and finally drag ( the doctorate degree) out of Harvard,” Metcalfe said.
In addition to being a technology trailblazer, Abramson was also a passionate surfer.
“He loved surfing,” Mark Abramson said. “He taught me to surf when I was a kid and I still do when I can get to Hawaii. I don’t do it in cold water anymore. That’s one of my most cherished memories with him.”
He was known for wearing Hawaiian shirts and hitting the waves every day at 4 p. m., Metcalfe said. Abramson returned to the Bay Area in 1995 and lived in San Francisco until his death.
He is survived by his wife, Joan, son, Mark, and three grandchildren.
“He was very kind and so we argued, then he offered to continue the conversation while surfing in Hawaii.”
Robert Metcalfe on his first encounter with Norman Abramson