Robert Fano
Scientist, Author
1917 –
Who is Robert Fano?
Robert Mario Fano is an Italian-American computer scientist, currently professor emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Fano is known principally for his work on information theory, inventing Shannon-Fano coding and deriving the Fano inequality. In the early 1960s, he was involved in the development of time-sharing computers, and served as director of MIT's Project MAC from its founding in 1963 until 1968.
Fano's father was the mathematician Gino Fano, his older brother was physicist Ugo Fano, and his cousin was Giulio Racah. He grew up in Turin and studied engineering as an undergraduate at the School of Engineering of Torino until 1939, when he emigrated to the United States as a result of anti-Jewish legislation passed under Benito Mussolini. He received his S.B. in electrical engineering from MIT in 1941, before joining the staff of the MIT Radiation Laboratory. After the war, he received an Sc.D., also from MIT, in 1947; his thesis, entitled "Theoretical Limitations on the Broadband Matching of Arbitrary Impedances", was supervised by Ernst Guillemin. He joined the MIT faculty in 1947.
We need you!
Help us build the largest biographies collection on the web!
Citation
Use the citation below to add to a bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Robert Fano." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 17 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/robert_fano>.
Discuss this Robert Fano biography with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In