USC Notables Honor Sol Golomb at the Hillel L’Chaim Award Dinner

University Professor Solomon Golomb received an evening of praise and reminiscence and USC Hillel came away with $100,000 in funding.

President Steven B. Sample, Viterbi School naming donor and trustee Andrew J. Viterbi, and Leventhal School of naming donor Kenneth Leventhal spoke, while Provost C. L. Max Nikias, Viterbi School Dean Yannis Yortsos and Nobel Prize winner Geoge Olah joined more than 220 well-wishers filling the Skirball Center.

The occasion was USC Hillel’s annual L’Chaim Award Dinner, a fundraising occasion for the benefit of the Jewish student group, which, per its mission statement, "provides the foundation for Jewish student life at USC, offering a secure, inclusive and nurturing environment for all Jews who are part of the USC community."

Golomb has been a steadfast supporter of the group for decades, and wryly pronounced his feelings as the reason he had "offered himself as a sacrifice" for the fundraiser. The warmth and specificity of the tributes to Golomb, a polymath linguist/mathematician/philosopher/game-designer and beloved father broke through the award dinner format in the presentations of speaker after speaker.  Sample, himself multitalented as engineer, administrator, and musician, pointed out the dimensions of Golomb's distinctions as an introduction.

"The title of university professor is the highest recognition USC can bestow on a faculty member," said Sample, noting that out of more than 3000 faculty, only 17 held the distinction. And, the president continued, "With his ceaseless curiosity, his thirst for learning across the academic landscape, and his extraordinary accomplishment, Sol Golomb is the very embodiment of the concept of university professor. … I often turn to Sol for advice and assistance, and I know I can always count on him."

Sample also noted Golomb as a "triple threat" — a member of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a winner of the Shannon Prize, the highest award in signal processing.

Golomb has served as a mentor to numerous students over the course of his career, and perhaps the most distinguished of all these former students delivered a long and eloquent tribute to his teacher. Andrew J. Viterbi recollected how he had met Golomb years before at JPL, and how generously Golomb had helped him not just in academic matters, but for such things as helping find a place for his parents to live.

It was in Golomb's car, Viterbi said, on long-ago a drive north to the Bay Area that he had made his decision to propose to his wife Erna. And when the marriage took place, in a now-vanished synagogue on Santa Barbara Boulevard (long since renamed after Martin Luther King) Golomb was by his side.

Viterbi took at least some of the credit for bringing Golomb to USC in 1963, where, as Viterbi noted, he is widely credited with laying the foundations of USC's emergence as an engineering superpower. Golomb now holds the engineering chair that bears Viterbi's name.

Golomb's daughter Beatrice could not be at the dinner: she had booked tickets more than a year before for a cruise of Patagonia. But on video, she presented a slide show of her father's life, beginning with tales of his astonishing precocity, of his courtship of his Scandinavian wife, of his linguistic prowess, of his invention of the game of polyminoes, the precursor of Tetris, as her mother, Bo, looked on proudly

No tributes to Golomb would be complete without a review of the classic photographs of the white-bearded professor sitting in the Hoose library in a full USC football uniform.  The image was used for the cover of the USC recruiting brochure that got the largest response in the history of the publication, so striking that it was reprised a second year.

A surprise award closed out the evening. Golomb already held the Kapitsa medal from the Russian academy of sciences (Russian is one of the languages he speaks). Fellow Russian akademik Professor George Chilingar had two new awards, plaques from the Russian academy and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences honoring Golomb for lifetime achievement.

Hillel itself offered its own tribute: "Sol Golomb has been a significant part of USC Hillel and the Jewish community for thirty years. We are so proud to honor him for his work on the Board and Executive Committee and for being such a strong supporter of Jewish life at USC," said Robert Gach, Board Chair USC Hillel Foundation