Behind the 5G speed that lets you open a video on your phone in seconds is a Turkish professor most of you have never heard of. Prof. Dr. Erdal Arikan solved a problem that had remained open since 1948, the time of information theory founder Claude Shannon, and that solution now connects billions of devices.
Born in 1958 in Ankara, the son of a doctor, he started electrical engineering at METU, then moved to the world's most elite schools: completing his bachelor's at Caltech and his master's and doctorate at MIT. After a period as a faculty member in the USA, he joined Bilkent University in Ankara in 1987 and continued his academic life there.
The solution to a half-century-old problem
The work Arikan published in 2008-2009, through a method he called 'channel polarization', transformed noisy communication channels into either nearly error-free or completely noisy channels. This gave birth to 'polar codes', which allow data to be transmitted at the highest theoretically possible speed (the Shannon limit) with zero error. This was the first practical method to effectively solve an information theory problem that had been unsolved for decades.
KEY MILESTONES
• Born in Ankara in 1958; studied at Caltech and MIT.
• Joined Bilkent University in 1987.
• Invented 'polar codes' in 2008-2009 — the first method to reach the Shannon limit.
• In 2016, 3GPP adopted polar codes as the official standard for 5G.
• Received the 2018 IEEE Hamming Medal and Huawei Special Award.
• Awarded the 2019 Claude E. Shannon Award.
From the lab to the world
In 2016, 3GPP, the international body responsible for 5G standards, adopted polar codes as the official coding scheme for the control channels of 5G New Radio. A Turkish professor's theory transformed from the lab into a global standard in less than a decade. Arikan collected the most prestigious awards in information theory for this achievement: IEEE Best Paper Award (2010), Hamming Medal (2018), Huawei Special Medal (2018), and the Claude E. Shannon Award (2019), considered the 'Nobel' of the field.
'For an engineer, there is no greater reward than seeing your ideas become reality.' Arikan said this in his award speech.
Erdal Arikan's story does not tell of a flashy billion-dollar valuation; but perhaps it tells of something more valuable: how patiently, quietly conducted basic science can transform an entire era. Every 5G connection actually carries the signature of a Turkish genius.
