Wilbur Davenport facts for kids

Wilbur B. Davenport Jr. (born July 27, 1920 – died August 28, 2003) was a very smart American engineer and scientist. He was famous for his important work on how we send and receive messages, like on phones or the internet. He helped make communication systems better and more secure.

Early Life and Education

Wilbur Davenport was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He loved learning and went to Auburn University, where he earned his first college degree in 1941. He was also part of a student group called Sigma Pi fraternity.

After that, he went to the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and got an even higher degree in 1943. From 1943 to 1946, he served in the United States Navy Reserve as a lieutenant (junior grade), which is a rank for officers in the Navy.

After his time in the Navy, he went back to MIT. He earned his highest degree, a Ph.D., in 1950. Even before finishing his Ph.D., he started teaching at MIT as an assistant professor in 1949.

Working as a Professor and Researcher

Wilbur Davenport became a full professor at MIT in 1960 and taught there until 1982. He also worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, which is a special research center. Starting in 1951, he led a group that studied new ways to use technology for communication.

In 1961, he became a leader at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Here, he worked on something called spread spectrum techniques. These are clever ways to send messages so they are more secure and harder for others to listen in on. He went back to Lincoln Lab in 1963.

In 1974, he was chosen to lead MIT's Electrical Engineering Department. During his four years as head, he made big changes. He updated what computer students learned and even changed the department's name to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This showed how important computers were becoming!

He also served on the board of directors for a company called GenRad Corporation from 1974 to 1982.

After he retired from MIT, he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. He continued teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa until 1987. Later that year, he moved to Sunriver, Oregon.

Important Writings and Awards

Wilbur Davenport wrote many important papers and books. In 1952, a science magazine called the Journal of Applied Physics published a paper he helped write. It was about understanding errors in measurements, especially for things that change randomly over time. This was one of his first papers about statistical theory, which uses math to understand data.

In the early 1960s, another magazine, the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, published his paper about how speech sounds are distributed.

He also wrote two important books:

• Probability and Random Processes (1975)
• An Introduction to the Theory of Random Signals and Noise (1958), which he wrote with William L. Root.

Wilbur Davenport was recognized for his amazing work. In 1975, he was chosen to be a member of the National Academy of Engineering. This is a very high honor for engineers in the United States. In 1981, he received the IEEE Pioneer Award. He won this award for his important research on spread spectrum technology, which he worked on with Paul E. Green, Mortimer Rogoff, and Louis A. deRosa.

Professor Davenport's main teacher when he was getting his Ph.D. was Professor Robert Fano. Some of his own students who became famous include Professor Victor On-Kwok Li and George L. Turin.

Wilbur Davenport was married to his wife, Joan. They had two children, Mark and Sally.