Andrew Viterbi endows Chair in Mediterranean Jewish studies
Cell phone pioneer encourages Jewish Studies innovation Growing up in Boston, where Italian immigrants tended to be Catholic, Andrew Viterbi raised eyebrows every time he responded to questions about his cultural heritage. “All the way through high school and college, I would be asked, ‘How can you be an Italian and a Jew?’” the father of cell phone technology recalls with a laugh. “Scholars have always known about Italy’s Jews, but to the general public, it’s a contradiction in terms.” In fact, the co-founder of Qualcomm and former UCLA engineering professor can trace his Italian Jewish roots on his father’s side back to 1588. To further understanding of this oftenoverlooked group, Viterbi, his wife, Erna, and their three children have established a $1.4 million endowment to create the first university program in Mediterranean Jewish studies. Beginning next fall, the Viterbi Family Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies will bring a distinguished scholar to campus for one quarter of instruction. The endowment will also fund quarterly seminars on Jewish communities in Italy, France, Spain, the Balkans, North Africa, Egypt or Israel. The new program is the outgrowth of a pilot program in Italian Jewish studies started three years ago at the Center for Jewish Studies with support from the Viterbi Family Foundation. The program builds on a trend in historical studies to look beyond traditional political boundaries in order to understand transnational commercial and intellectual connections between different groups of people.
The Viterbi’s family emigrated to Boston after a series of racial laws in Mussolini’s Italy in 1938 made it impossible for the elder Viterbi to continue working as an opthalomogist in the Lombardy town of Bergamo, northeast of Milan. “For the subsequent two decades, which were my formative years, I strove to erase my Italian past and take on the new identity of an American Jew,” Viterbi recalled. “I recognized only my parents’ bitter experience of the recent past and not their sweet memories of an earlier Italy of culture, beauty, and tolerance.” Viterbi said his feelings softened considerably after meeting and marrying Erna Finci. Finci was living in Sarajevo when the Germans invaded in 1941. Along with her family, she fled to a part of what today is Croatia that was under the control of the Italian military. When the Fincis were eventually interned as Jews, they were not sent to a concentration camp but to a small Italian village. “Ultimately, the family was able to escape to Switzerland, and it was a harrowing experience. But all along the way, there were Italians who helped them and protected them from the Germans. Hearing her experiences really changed my mind about Italians in World War II.”
Viterbi wins science awards Andrew Viterbi has been selected for the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest honor in science and technology. He is also one of four 2008 Millennium Technology Laureates, or finalists for the world’s largest technology award. The bi-annual Millennium Prize celebrates innovations that have a favorable impact on quality of life and wellbeing or on sustainable development. Viterbi was recognized for his pathbreaking algorithm, developed in 1967 while he was on the UCLA faculty. Today it is used in billions of cell phones, as well as in magnetic recording devices, most satellite television receivers, a variety of cable systems, voice recognition programs and even DNA sequence analysis.
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