university professor computer scientist
Huffman earned in 1944 his bachelor"s degree in electrical engineering from, then served two years as an officer in the United States Navy. He returned to Ohio State to earn in 1949 his master"s degree in electrical engineering. In 1953, he collected his Doctor of Science in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), with the thesis The Synthesis of Sequential Switching Circuits, advised by Samuel H. Caldwell.
He was also one of the pioneers in the field of mathematical origami. David Huffman died at the age of 74, ten months after being diagnosed with cancer. Huffman joined the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953.
In 1967, he joined the faculty of University of California, Santa Cruz and helped found its Computer Science Department, where he served as chair from 1970 to 1973.
He retired in 1994.
1999: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Richard W. Hamming Meda
1998: A Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Information Theory Society, for "the invention of the Huffman minimum-length lossless data-compression code".
1981: Charter recipient of the Computer Pioneer Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society.
1973: The W. Wallace McDowell Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society.
1955: The Louis E. Levy Medal from the Franklin Institute for his doctoral thesis on sequential switching circuits.
