
Solomon Golomb (1932–2016) - NoXReX
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/05/solomon-golomb-19322016/
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cwilkes
> Most of the scientists and mathematicians I know I met first through
> professional connections. But not Sol Golomb. It was 1981, and I was at
> Caltech, a 21-year-old physicist who’d just received some media attention
> from being the youngest in the first batch of MacArthur award recipients.

Man, Stephen can #humblebrag the shit out of anything, including the death of
a famous mathematician

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rdtsc
I first encountered his name when learning data encoding which used
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golomb_coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golomb_coding).

One thing that struck me there was the use of unary coding, which I thought
was pretty cool. In my case I was writing a JPEG-LS decoder. Looking at the
wiki, I see it is also used in some audio codecs as well.

~~~
theoh
Also neat (and a prefix code) is Fibonacci coding:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_coding)

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JoeDaDude
I am lucky to have attended the small symposium at Villanova University only a
few weeks ago where Golomb was presented the Franklin Institute Award in
electrical engineering. One of those in attendance was Dr. Andrew Viterbi,
known for another significant contribution to telecommunications.

A short video of Golomb's accomplishments is available here at the Franklin
Institute website: [https://www.fi.edu/laureates/solomon-w-
golomb](https://www.fi.edu/laureates/solomon-w-golomb)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
"""biology uses a more straightforward encoding, where some of the 64 possible
triples just don’t represent anything"""

I don't think this is strictly true, 61 of the 64 codons translate into 1 of
20 amino acids, and the other 3 are "stop" codons, which I'd argue do
represent something. (and at least one of those is sometimes translated as
well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenocysteine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenocysteine))

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martininmelb
Interesting article. I had not associated him with LSFRs, but did know about
his eponymous ruler:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golomb_ruler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golomb_ruler)

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tchitra
> Berlekamp also created an algorithmic trading system that he sold to Jim
> Simons and that became a starting point for Renaissance Technologies, now
> the world’s largest hedge fund.

Renaissance isn't the world's largest hedge fund.

~~~
droshelovich
As far as I know, they only have to disclose to the SEC how much money they
have invested in equities. Since they don't publicly state total assets under
management, we can't really know how much money Renaissance manages. They
could have loads more than $52b invested in debt, commodities, currencies,
etc.

[http://whalewisdom.com/filer/renaissance-technologies-
llc](http://whalewisdom.com/filer/renaissance-technologies-llc)

~~~
tchitra
I should correct myself:

It is extremely unlikely that they are the biggest fund based on their
fundraising history.

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superobserver
The man was an intellectual giant, and not only because he scored 44/48 on the
Titan Test. He will be fondly remembered.

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tacos
If, like me, you've learned to avoid everything Mr. Wolfram writes do yourself
a favor and make an exception to read this one. It's great. Either he's
learning from his mistakes or the meds are working.

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nkurz
This comment was flagged dead (maybe justifiably), but I vouched to bring it
back. While it may sound like an insult, I felt the same pleasant surprise as
'tacos' while reading it. This was definitely a different voice than usual for
Wolfram, and I genuinely hope it's because he's taken feedback from others on
how his tone sometimes comes across.

~~~
superobserver
No, I think you made the correct decision. Wolfram must finally be learning
something about how to make a comfortable verbal approach.

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syngrog66
Wolfram at his best

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russellbeattie
I'm consistently amazed by his blog. Wolfram's posts are always so huge and so
detailed. I'm a decent writer (or so I thought), but it would take me weeks to
write that post, even if I understood all the math, which I don't. It's insane
how prolific he is.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Hasn't he used uncredited ghosts in the past?

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dharma1
Great read

