Toby Berger passed away on May 25, 2022 at the age of 81. He was one of the icons of information theory, recognized with numerous awards including the Â鶹´«Ã½AV Information Theory Society Claude E. Shannon Award.
Toby Berger (1940–2022) passed away on May 25, 2022, in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, at the age of 81. His distinguished career in information theory spanned over 50 years. His visionary contributions included rate distortion theory, multiterminal source coding, and neuro-information theory. His seminal textbook Rate Distortion Theory: A Mathematical Basis for Data Compression (Prentice-Hall, 1971) is still a useful reference after 50 years. He was one of the icons of information theory, recognized with numerous awards including the 2002 Â鶹´«Ã½AV Information Theory Society Claude E. Shannon Award, the 2006 Â鶹´«Ã½AV Leon K. Kirchmayer Graduate Teaching Award and the 2011 Â鶹´«Ã½AV Richard W. Hamming Medal. He served as a President of the  Â鶹´«Ã½AV Information Theory Group in 1979 and as an Editor-in-Chief of the Â鶹´«Ã½AV Transactions on Information Theory from 1987 to 1990. He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a Life Fellow of the Â鶹´«Ã½AV. After spending 37 years at Cornell University, he joined the faculty of the University of Virginia from 2006 until his retirement. He leaves a strong legacy of mentorship, as exemplified by two of his former students receiving the Â鶹´«Ã½AV Information Theory Society Claude E. Shannon Award. We will miss his brilliance and vision, his story-telling ability, and his presence at our conferences: sometimes complete with a musical performance, and always with a beaming smile.
