Andrea Viterbi was born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1935. This was a turbulent time in Europe and the Viterbis left in August 1939 and landed in New York. After two years the family settled in Boston, Massachusetts.

In the English-speaking world, Andrea was regarded as a female name, so his name was changed to Andrew. Andrew grew up as an American boy, attended the Boston Latin School, and then entered the famous technology university, MIT, just across the river. He entered as a freshman in 1952 to study electrical engineering.

At MIT he progressed rapidly and in just five years he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering. Viterbi continued his studies at the University of Southern California while working at JPL and completed his Ph.D. dissertation on the error correcting codes. He continued in the academic world, at UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Science, teaching digital communications and information theory. This time led to his invention, in the late 1960s, of his famous algorithm, the Viterbi algorithm, and was the period during which he wrote his most important papers on communication theory.

In 2000 Viterbi was ranked 386th on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, with an estimated worth of $640 million. In 2002 Boston Latin School, Viterbi’s childhood school, built and equipped a new computer centre with funds donated by Dr. Viterbi and in March 2004, the University of Southern California School of Engineering was renamed the Viterbi School of Engineering, in his honour, following his $52 million donation to the school.

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Andrew Viterbi in wikipedia

Andrew Viterbi interviewed by the National Academy of Sciences