Stanford electrical engineering and statistics professor Thomas Cover M.S. ’61 Ph.D. ’64 died March 26 at Stanford Hospital. He was 73.

Cover made major contributions to various fields, including information theory, mathematical statistics, data compressions, pattern recognition and stock market investment strategies. His co-written book “Elements of Information Theory” is considered a keystone text for modern information theory.

Cover was born in San Bernardino, Calif., and graduated with a B.S. in physics from MIT in 1960. He became a Stanford School of Engineering professor at in 1972 , directed the Information Systems Laboratory from 1988 to 1994 and was named the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor of Electrical Engineering and Statistics in 1994.

Cover was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. He was also president of the Information Theory Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), elected to the National Academy of Engineering and named as a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the IEEE.

Some of Cover’s most important work concerned broadcast data transmission. In 1973, his work on the superposition of signals in broadcast channels made it possible to transmit information from one transmitter to several receivers simultaneously.

From 1986 to 1994, Cover served as a statistician for the California State Lottery while on the faculty at Stanford, devising ways to beat the lottery to prevent fraud and designing tests for lottery balls and wheels.

Cover is survived by his wife, Karen, three brothers, two children, a stepson and four grandchildren. A memorial service is scheduled for Oct. 12, 2012, at the University Alumni Center. More details will be posted on the Thomas Cover memorial website.

 

— Alice Phillips