Abraham Lempel (Hebrew: אברהם למפל; 10 February 1936 – 4 February 2023)[1] was an Israeli computer scientist and one of the fathers of the LZ familyoflossless data compression algorithms.
Abraham Lempel
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Lempel in 2007
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| Born | (1936-02-10)10 February 1936 |
| Died | 4 February 2023(2023-02-04) (aged 86) |
| Known for | LZ77 and LZ78 compression algorithms |
| Awards | Paris Kanellakis Award (1997) IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal (2007) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Information theory |
| Institutions | Technion - Israel Institute of Technology |
Lempel was born on 10 February 1936 in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine).[2] He studied at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and received a B.Sc. in 1963, an M.Sc. in 1965, and a D.Sc. in 1967. Since 1977 he held the title of full professor, and was a professor emeritus at Technion.
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), co-authored by Jacob Ziv.
Lempel was the recipient of the 1998 Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society;[3] and the 2007 IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for "pioneering work in data compression, especially the Lempel-Ziv algorithm".[4]
Lempel founded HP Labs—Israel in 1994, and served as its director until October 2007.
Lempel died on 4 February 2023, at age 86.
The LZ77 and LZ78 algorithms authored by Lempel and Jacob Ziv have led to a number of derivative works, including the Lempel–Ziv–Welch algorithm, used in the GIF image format, and the Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain algorithm, used in the 7-Zip and xz compressors. The algorithms have also been used as originally published in formats such as DEFLATE, used in the PNG image format.
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