Gustave Solomon

[John Young]

   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.