Gustave Solomon

Mathematician Gustave Solomon died on January 31 in Los Angeles. He was 65. Dr. Solomon was a co-inventor with Irving S. Reed of the Reed-Solomon codes, which have come into increasingly widespread use as a way of combatting the inevitable errors that occur in the transmission and storage of information. He did early work concerning the algebraic theory of error-correcting codes, and, with H. F. Mattson, was co-author of the powerful tool for analyzing such codes known as the Mattson-Solomon polynomial. His other interests included composing popular songs and folksongs and teaching voice and movement. Excerpted from NYT obituary, February 18, 1996.