The ALOHAnet designed by him in the 70s in Hawaii, was a precursor to the technology used in today’s smartphones and home WiFi networks.
Norman Abramson, one of the early pioneers behind wireless networks, has passed away at the age of 88 at his home in San Francisco, California. The cause of death was skin cancer that had metastasised to his lungs, his son, Mark, said. An engineer and student of communications theory, a discipline that was at the time at the intersection of mathematics, information technology, and semiotics, Abramson studied at Harvard, and he received a master’s at University of California LA (UCLA) and a Ph.D. from Stanford. Abramson moved to Hawaii and took a faculty position at the University of Hawaii (UH) Manoa’s College of Engineering partly due to his love for surfing.
