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OCR for page 299
STEPHEN O
1907-1986
RICE
BY DAVID SLEPIAN
Stephen O. "Steve" Rice, a communications engineer of
worldwide renown and a pioneer in the applications of
probability techniques to engineering problems, died of
pulmonary fibrosis on November IS, 1986, at the Scripps
Memorial Hospital in La {olIa, California. He was seventy-
eight. During the previous fourteen years, he had served
on the staff of the University of California, San Diego, as a
research physicist in electrical engineering and computer
sciences. He will be missed by the engineering community
for his special talents and his scientific contributions; he
will be sorely missed by those who knew and loved him for
the fine man he was.
Steve Rice was born on November 29, 1907, in the small
town of Shedds, Oregon, the only child of Stephen Rice, a
buttermaker, and Selma R. Bergren. Some years later the
family moved to Astoria, Oregon, where Steve finished his
secondary education. Subsequently, he entered Oregon
State University, Co~vallis, and there received a B.S. in electrical
engineering in 1929. It was during his senior year that he
met Inez Biersdorf, who two years later became his wife
and lifelong companion.
The academic year 1929~30 was spent in Pasadena, California,
where Steve undertook graduate studies in physics at the
California Institute of Technology. In the fall of 1930, he
299
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300
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
joined Bell Telephone Laboratories, then located in New
York City in lower Manhattan. For the next forty-one years
until his retirement in 1972, Bell was to remain Steve's
technical home and the center of his professional activities.
His first job there was with a small group of mathematically
inclined engineers involved in transmission research. The
mathematical analysis of communication systems became
and remained his primary technical interest.
During his long career with Bell Laboratories, Rice's of-
ficial title, his department, and his location of work changed
several times, but the nature of his work remained much
the same. His great talent was recognized very early, and
Steve was soon given a free hand to pursue research of his
own interest. These interests, inspired by the problems he
saw about him, fortunately overlapped closely those of the
Laboratories, and so a fruitful and lasting partnership was
made. As Steve's contributions became known and as his
reputation grew, he was actively sought out as a consultant
by many different groups within the Laboratories. In this
role, he was invaluable. At the time of his retirement from
Bell, Steve's title was "Head, Communication Theory Depart-
ment" and his work location was Murray Hill, New Jersey.
In this role he oversaw a small group of top theorists and
pursued his own research.
Rice hacI two periods of leave from Bell. In the depths
of the depression, he returned for a year to the California
Institute of Technology where he undertook further graduate
studies while working on the Bateman Manuscript Project.
This group prepared the first modern comprehensive series
of volumes on the integral transforms and transcendental
special functions of applied mathematics. Rice's deep
knowledge of the classical special functions shows up in
many of his later research papers. He was indeed a master
of the classical analytic techniques their use demands. His
second leave came much later when he served in 1958 as a
Gordon McKay visiting lecturer at Harvard University.
Rice published sixty-three scientific papers cluring his career.
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STEPHEN O. RICE
30
With a few exceptions they fall into five categories: electro-
magnetic theory, applied mathematics, communication de-
vices and systems, traffic theory, and noise theory. His
work greatly influenced each of these fields. His contribu-
tions were always original and deep; many were seminal.
His 1950 paper "Communication in the Presence of Noise"
was the first in the new field of Information Theory to
evaluate explicitly bounds on the error probability attainable
with ideal systems. It preceded by ten years a burst of
similar activity that occupied the information theorists in
the ~ 960s. His ~ 95 ~ paper "Reflection of Electromagnetic
Waves from Slightly Rough Surfaces" was fundamental to
the understanding of radar return from the ocean and ce-
lestial bodies. It was an early application to two dimensions
of his methods in applied stochastic processes. The famous
1963 paper "Noise in FM Receivers" with its ingenious original
definition and analysis of "clicks" solved the long mystery
of the sudden deterioration of FM above a certain threshold
of noise and gave the most profound treatment of that
modulation method.
One could cite other contributions of similar unusual
merit, but it is for the monumental paper "Mathematical
Analysis of Random Noise," published in two parts in the
Bell System Technical journal, Vol. 23, July 1944, pp. 282-332,
and Vol. 24, January 1945, pp. 4~156, that Steve will be
best remembered. This long paper, really a treatise, laid
the foundations of noise theory and at the same time solved
many of its most interesting, important, and difficult problems.
The paper has been of utmost importance in communication
theory, ocean engineering, material engineering, aircraft
design and analysis, and many other fields of technology
where random phenomena play a significant role. That
today, forty-six years later, this work is cited fifty times or
more a year in papers from a dozen different fields is testimony
to its enduring contribution.
The genesis of this famous paper merits comment. In
the early 1940s Rice and many other Bell Laboratories engineers
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
pursued graduate studies at Columbia University on a part-
time basis. Many ultimately received their doctorates in
this program. Rice ctid not. He completed his course work
and submitted a highly original thesis, the result of many
years of work and interest in applied probability. Accord-
ing to an oft-repeated story, which ~ have not been able to
verifSr, the thesis was submitted to two different departments.
Each rejected it, claiming that it was not in their purview.
Be that as it may, for whatever reason the thesis was not
accepted, and Steve gave up the goal of higher degrees.
The submitted work was, of course, the paper "Mathemati-
cal Analysis of Random Noise." Years later, for his role in
founding the new field that grew from this rejected thesis,
he received an honorary D.Sc. from his alma mater Oregon
State University.
In his forty years of active work after the appearance of
"Mathematical Analysis of Random Noise," Steve published
many additional papers that extended the theory and applied
it to diverse situations of engineering interest. Almost always
in these researches he was motivated by a concrete physical
problem, and the mathematics he developed were incidental
to the goal of solving the physical problem. Not content
with results that were left as formulas, he would always evaluate
complicated expressions and present curves and numerical
results to illustrate the physical problem. Often these
evaluations caller! for the invention of special techniques
of approximation or of numerical analysis, and these Steve
published as separate contributions to the mathematics lit-
erature. Highly skilled in mathematics and appreciative of
the needs of rigor, yet motivated by real world problems
and blessed with great originality and physical insight, Steve
Rice was the ideal theoretical engineer.
After his retirement from Bell in 1972, Steve and his wife
moved to La JolIa, California, where he joined the staff of
the University of California with the title research physicist
in electrical engineering and computer sciences. He had
no official duties there but could be found daily in his
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STEPHEN 0. RICE
303
office from 7 a.m. until noon pursuing his researches and
giving freely of his time to students and faculty alike. Af-
ternoons were spent with his family. He continued his
researches actively up to the time of his death.
Steve received a number of awards in recognition of his
technical achievements. He was a fellow of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers and received its M. I.
Kelly Award in 1965 and their Alexander Graham Bell Award
in 1983. As already noted, he was honored with a D.Sc
from Oregon State in ~ 961. He received the National
Telecommunications Conference Outstanding Contribution
Award in 1974. His election to the National Academy of
Engineering was in ~ 977.
Great as were his technical achievements, to those of us
who worked with him throughout the years Steve made an
even greater contribution. He showed us how fine and
how noble the nature of man can be. Steve was soft-spoken,
quiet in his ways a somewhat private person, yet with the
greatest charity to all. He gave unstintingly of his time to
all who asked. His patience seemed endless. He was the
most genuinely modest person T have ever known. He seemed
totally unaware of his very considerable accomplishments
and talents. He coveted neither authority, fame, nor power.
His life was his work, his family, en c] the demonstration of
kindness to all.
Steve is survived by his wife, Inez; a son, Stephen E. Rice
of De] Mar, California; two daughters, Carole Hanau of
Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, and Joan McHugh of San Diego,
California; nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
By these and by all who knew him well, this kind and talented
man will be forever missed.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
graduate studies
