Science, Medicine & Engineering
Landmark
Victor B. Lawrence
born 1945
His chipsets are inside the modems and DSL that carried the early internet
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Ghana Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
An Accra-born Bell Labs engineer whose signal-processing work took modems from 2.4 to 56 kilobits and became the heart of DSL. Fifty patents, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Victor B. Lawrence was born in Accra on 10 May 1945 and took his bachelor's, master's and doctorate in electrical engineering at Imperial College, London, completing the PhD in 1972.
He joined Bell Laboratories in 1974 and rose through it to Vice President of Advanced Communications Technology. He was lead engineer on AT&T's 2.4 kbps full-duplex modem and his work pushed modems to 56 kbps; his chipsets became the heart of voice-band modems and of DSL, and his contributions to the V-series standards are part of why computer networks interoperate worldwide. He holds fifty patents, has written more than a hundred technical papers and co-authored five books, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2016.
He joined Bell Laboratories in 1974 and rose through it to Vice President of Advanced Communications Technology. He was lead engineer on AT&T's 2.4 kbps full-duplex modem and his work pushed modems to 56 kbps; his chipsets became the heart of voice-band modems and of DSL, and his contributions to the V-series standards are part of why computer networks interoperate worldwide. He holds fifty patents, has written more than a hundred technical papers and co-authored five books, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2016.
- Wikipedia — Victor B. Lawrence
- National Inventors Hall of Fame — Victor B. Lawrence
- Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Victor B. Lawrence
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