Irwin M. Jacobs

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Irwin Mark Jacobs, Sc.D. (1933-), Electrical Engineer and Chairman of Qualcomm, Incorporated.

Irwin Mark Jacobs was born October 18, 1933 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. earned his Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1956, and his S.M. and Sc.D. in EECS from MIT in 1957 and 1959 respectively.

Dr. 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 Principles of Communication Engineering in 1965, which is still used today.

In 1969 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 Dr. Jacobs went on to co-found of Qualcomm to commercially develop CDMA technology, which he pioneered and which more-efficiently uses the communication bandwidth than the older fixed time-sliced TDMA technology. Jacobs is currently chairman of Qualcomm.

Irwin Jacobs and his wife Joan Jacobs are generous contributors to public arts and education in San Diego. They have four sons. Their son Dr. Paul E. Jacobs is CEO of Qualcomm.

Dr. Jacobs was MIT's commencement speaker in 2005.

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