Irwin M. Jacobs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Irwin Mark Jacobs (born October 18, 1933 in New Bedford, Massachusetts), is an electrical engineer and the co-founder and former chairman of Qualcomm, and chair of the board of trustees of the Salk Institute.
[edit] Biography
Jacobs earned his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1956, and his S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in EECS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1957 and 1959, respectively. Additionally he is a brother of Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity.
Jacobs was Assistant and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT from 1959 to 1966 and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego from 1966 to 1972. He co-authored a textbook entitled Principles of Communication Engineering in 1965, which is still used today.
In 1968 Jacobs co-founded Linkabit Corporation with Andrew Viterbi to develop satellite encryption devices. That company merged with M/A-COM in 1980, becoming M/A-COM Linkabit.
In 1985 Jacobs went on to co-found Qualcomm to commercially develop CDMA technology, which he pioneered and which uses the communication bandwidth more efficiently than the older fixed time-sliced TDMA technology. Dr. Jacobs announced on March 3, 2009 that he had stepped down as chairman of Qualcomm and that Paul Jacobs had been named to succeed him.
Jacobs delivered the 2005 commencement speech at MIT.[1]
In 2008, Jacobs delivered the commencement speech for the Engineering School at UC San Diego. [2]
Jacobs and his wife Joan Jacobs are generous contributors to public arts and education in San Diego. For this Jacobs was given the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship in 2004.
He and his wife have four sons. Their son Paul E. Jacobs is CEO of Qualcomm. Jeff Jacobs is the Chief Marketing Officer of Qualcomm. Hal Jacobs the second oldest, played on the 1985 USA Maccabi volleyball team, and is a Co-Producer of the hit musical Jersey Boys. Their eldest son Gary Jacobs is the head of the board of High Tech High. Jacobs is Jewish. Jacobs's grandson Adam Jacobs is a catcher on the Cornell University baseball team.
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Hiroshi Inose |
IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal 1995 |
Succeeded by Tadahiro Sekimoto |
