Norman Abramson, one of the founders of the ALOHAnet, passed away on December 1, 2020, at the age of 88.
In 1971, Abramson, who was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, teamed up with faculty member Franklin Kuo, other colleagues and graduate students, to lauch ALOHAnet, the first wireless packet data network. ALOHAnet pioneered the use of medium access (ALOHA random access) and experimental ultra high frequency (UHF) for its operation. The concept of random access, allowing clients to transmit data when ready and allowing for packet collisions, was later adopted as the basis of Ethernet.
