Irwin M. Jacobs

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Dr. Irwin Jacobs speaking during dedication of the Computer Science and Engineering Building and "bear" sculpture at UCSD in 2005.

Irwin Mark Jacobs (born October 18, 1933 in New Bedford, Massachusetts), is an electrical engineer and the chairman of Qualcomm.

Jacobs earned his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1956, and his S.M. and Sc.D. in EECS from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1957 and 1959, respectively. Additionally he is a brother of Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity.

Jacobs was Assistant and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT from 1959 to 1966 and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego from 1966 to 1972. He co-authored a textbook entitled Principles of Communication Engineering in 1965, which is still used today.

In 1968 Jacobs co-founded Linkabit Corporation with Andrew Viterbi to develop satellite encryption devices. That company merged with M/A-COM in 1980, becoming M/A-COM Linkabit.

In 1985 Jacobs went on to co-found Qualcomm to commercially develop CDMA technology, which he pioneered and which uses the communication bandwidth more efficiently than the older fixed time-sliced TDMA technology. Dr. Jacobs is currently chairman of Qualcomm.

Jacobs and his wife Joan Jacobs are generous contributors to public arts and education in San Diego. They have four sons. Their son Paul E. Jacobs is CEO of Qualcomm. Their other son Gary Jacobs is the head of the board of High Tech High. Jacobs is Jewish. Jacobs's grandson Adam Jacobs is a catcher on the Cornell University baseball team.