Abraham Lempel

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Abraham Lempel
Born Poland
Residence Israel
Fields Information theory
Institutions Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Known for LZ77, LZ78
Notable awards 2007 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal

Abraham Lempel (Hebrew: אברהם למפל‎) is a computer scientist and one of the fathers of the LZ family of lossless data compression algorithms. Originally from Poland, Lempel is now a citizen of Israel. He is now a professor emeritus in Technion - Israel Institute of Technology.

His historically important works start with the presentation of the LZ77 algorithm in a paper entitled "A Universal Algorithm for Sequential Data Compression" in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (May 1977). This work was co-authored by Jacob Ziv. He has been named the recipient of the 2007 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal "For pioneering work in data compression, especially the Lempel-Ziv algorithm."

The following algorithms point with their letter L towards Lempel:

  • 1977: LZ77 (Lempel–Ziv)
  • 1978: LZ78 (Lempel–Ziv)
  • 1984: LZW (Lempel–Ziv–Welch)
  • LZR (LZ–Renau)
  • LZS (Lempel–Ziv–Stac)
  • LZO (Lempel–Ziv–Oberhumer)
  • 2001: LZMA (Lempel–Ziv–Markov chain Algorithm)

The terms LZX, LHA (LHarc) and LZH do reference Lempel as well.

His works laid the basis for such compressed graphics formats as GIF, TIFF and JPEG.

Lempel is the father of four sons, three of which are married. He has 8 grandchildren (7 girls and 1 boy).

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