Stephen O. "Steve" Rice was a pioneer in the field of communication theory

Communication theory

Communication theory is a field of information and mathematics that studies the technical process of information and the human process of human communication.- History :- Origins :...

.

Biography

He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 from Oregon State University

Oregon State University

Oregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are more than 200 academic degree programs offered through the...

 and did graduate work at Caltech and at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. He worked for nearly forty years at Bell Labs

Bell Labs

Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...

. At Bell Labs, Rice discovered the Rice distribution

Rice distribution

In probability theory, the Rice distribution or Rician distribution is the probability distribution of the absolute value of a circular bivariate normal random variable with potentially non-zero mean. It was named after Stephen O...

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His paper “Mathematical Analysis of Random Noise”, published in the Bell System Technical Journal

Bell System Technical Journal

The Bell System Technical Journal was the in-house scientific journal of Bell Labs that was published from 1922 to 1983.- Notable papers :...

 divided over two issues, is considered as a classic reference in its field.

Awards and honors

• He was elected to member of the National Academy of Engineering
  National Academy of Engineering
  The National Academy of Engineering is a government-created non-profit institution in the United States, that was founded in 1964 under the same congressional act that led to the founding of the National Academy of Sciences...
  
   in 1977.
• In 1983 he was awarded the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
  IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
  The IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal is an award honoring "exceptional contributions to the advancement of communications sciences and engineering" in the field of telecommunications...
  
  .
• The IEEE Communications Society
  IEEE Communications Society
  The IEEE Communications Society is a professional society of the IEEE. It is also known by the abbreviation ComSoc. The Society focuses on two principal areas: the science of, and education about, communications engineering with the goal of advancing the state of the field; and professional...
  
   named a paper prize after him: the Stephen O. Rice Prize for best paper in the field of communications theory.