The Marconi Prize is awarded annually to individuals whose scope of work and influence carry on the legacy of Guglielmo Marconi, recipient of the 1909 Nobel Prize for his pioneering achievements in wireless technology. The Marconi Society recognizes its Fellows for their lasting scientific contributions to human progress in the field of communications science and the Internet.

MIT Pioneer in Cryptography, Computer and Network Security.

His pioneering research and advanced modem design helped create DSL (digital subscriber line) circuits bringing broadband Internet access to hundreds of millions of people.

His discovery of turbo codes opened new avenues of research that have led to modern advances in mobile telephony, satellite and radio communications.

Their invention of a unique search engine technology fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved, by organizing much of the world's information and making it universally accessible.

His fundamental contributions to information theory and the theory of communications networks placed information theory on a sound mathematical foundation.

He helped build the early Internet and invented the Ethernet, the local-area networking standard on which he shares four patents.

He invented the World Wide Web as an Internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing and wrote the first web client (browser-editor) and server in 1990.

His contributions to developments in laser technology, optoelectronics, photonics and lightwave communications systems were critical to the development of optical telecommunications.

His work became the basis of the theory on light transmission in an optical fiber, which in turn made optical fiber technology possible and has enabled millions of miles of fiber optic cable to be laid around the globe.

They co-developed the Diffie-Hellman algorithm for key exchange "the basis of the public-key cryptography system to allow the secure transmission of information over the Internet"and helped make cryptography a legitimate area of academic research.

He made significant advances in forward-error-correcting codes, multi-user communications and cryptographic systems and was a teacher and mentor to a generation of scientists and technologists.

His ambassadorial leadership was critical to the creation and evolution of the Internet, and together with Robert Kahn he co-invented the TCP/IP protocols and the basic architecture of the Internet.

His seminal work in the invention of the first reliable high speed modem, later adopted as an international standard, is regarded as the basis for all subsequent modem technology.

He invented Trellis Coded Modulation, which creates an optimal way to encode the ones and zeros in analog waveforms to allow the maximum amount of data to be transmitted over an analog telephone.

He made significant contributions to communications and information theory, particularly his work on the Lempel-Ziv algorithm, which allows for efficient encoding.

He was responsible for the system design of the ARPANET, conceived the idea of open-architecture networking and co-invented the TCP/IP protocols.

His pioneering contributions to optoelectronic technology included development of the first room-temperature continuous-wave semiconductor injection laser with double heterostructure, as well as highly reliable lasers for optical communication, optical memory, and other applications.

He established and characterized acoustic processes for information exchanges among humans and between humans and machines, and made significant contributions to the development of signal coding algorithms used in telecommunications, voicemail systems, and automatic speech synthesis and recognition.

He invented packet switching, which revolutionized speed and efficiency of data transmission.

His work in digital wireless communications, particularly his widely used Viterbi Algorithm used by all four international standards for digital cellular telephony, allows many users to share the same radio frequencies, thereby exponentially increasing system capacity.

The semiconductor laser he developed is used in all CD and CD-ROM units, laser printers, some remote controls, and most fiber-optic communications systems.

He invented Self Aligned MOS Silicon Gate Technology which enabled the creation of semiconductor memories and microprocessors, and designed and co-invented the world's first microprocessors.

He invented the automatically adaptive equalizer, an important advance in digital communications and the key enabler for all high speed modems today.

He contributed to the basic principles of packet switching, the technology underpinning the Internet, and directed the transmission of the first message ever to pass over the Internet

Dr. Kao's contributions helped to revolutionize the use of optical fiber for communications applications in both military and civil communications.

His leadership in electronic technology included pioneering contributions in the development of surface acoustic wave devices for signal processing and optical fiber communications.

He was a leader in radio frequency engineering and the first to demonstrate the feasibility of radio relay systems.

He was the first to specify in detail both the great potential and the technical requirements for using geostationary satellites for global communications and his lifetime of work promoted the benevolent use of advanced space technology

He was a pioneer in the development of Artificial Intelligence, and a major proponent of bringing IT to classrooms to teach mathematics to children by involving them in creative experimentation and the making of social objects.

As the first director of the Space Applications Centre at Ahmedabad, he was a leader in applying modern communications technology to meet the needs of isolated rural Indian villagers through the use of a satellite-based direct television broadcast for education and development.

He designed and was responsible for the launch of the first active communications satellite, Telstar I, and contributed significantly to advances in space and satellite communications technologies in their applications to communications. Professor Pierce died in 2002.

He helped lay much of the foundation of modern information theory and explored and wrote about the totality of the concept of communications, its technology, its human dimension, its social significance, and its power to influence economic development. Professor Cherry died in 1979.

His co-invention of the laser and his research in the fields of optical and microwave spectroscopy and nuclear quadruple resonance superconductivity contributed, among other things, to the ability to transmit huge amounts of data via optical fiber. Dr. Schawlow shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1981 and died in 1999.

He invented the time-slot interchange system, a key technology for digital telephone switches and integrated service digital networks. He died in 2000.

As the tenth president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he led MIT's movement into the field of digital computers and information-processing. Dr. Killian died in 1988.

MARCONI SOCIETY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

As co-founder of Intel Corporation, he spearheaded decades of technological research and developments that made the company a leader in semiconductor manufacturing and technology. He is best known for his 1965  "Moore's Law" prediction which stated that the number of transistors the industry would be able to place on an integrated circuit would double every year. Moore's Law has, over the years, paved the way for the exponential increases in computing power at proportionately decreasing costs, helping to bring the cost of computers within reach of millions of new users each year.

As president of Bell Labs and a widely recognized champion of communications research and development, he devoted more than six decades to advocating and championing basic research for improving life in America. Under his leadership Bell Labs forged themodel for modern industrial research laboratory, and he was often called upon to advise U.S. presidents in the areas of national security and intelligence gathering. He died in 2005.

Honored for a lifetime of contributions in information theory, Dr. Shannon's concepts are among the most significant intellectual accomplishments of the Twentieth Century. His book, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, has been proclaimed the Magna Carta of the Information Age, and still is instrumental in suchdiverse fields as computer science, genetics, linguistics and neuroanatomy. He died in 2001.