Dr. Andrew Viterbi (March 9, 1935) is the cofounder with Irwin Jacobs of Linkabit Corporation in 1968, a small military contractor and Qualcomm Inc. in 1985. He received his Bachelors and Masters degrees from MIT, and his Ph.D. in digital communications from the University of Southern California (USC). He is a former professor of electrical engineering at UCLA and UCSD and inventor of the Viterbi algorithm. As of 2003, he is the president of the venture capitalist The Viterbi Group . In 2000, Viterbi ranked 386th on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated worth of $640 million.
Andrew Viterbi was born in Bergamo, Italy and immigrated with his parents in 1939 to the United States as a refugee. He is married to Erna Finci.
On March 2, 2004, the University of Southern California School of Engineering was renamed to the Viterbi School of Engineering in his honor following his $52 million donation to the school.