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The ceremony of the 2005 Eduard Rhein Awards took place on October 15, 2005 at the Ehrensaal (Hall of Fame) of the Deutsche Museum (German Museum of Science and Technology), Munich, Germany. Among the 300 invited guests were representatives from universities, research institutions, electronics industries, and governments. The Ehrensaal, inaugurated in 1925, is a beautiful pantheon decorated with portraits of Gauss and other great scientists, and busts of Einstein and others. The ceremony began with ensemble music, and several speeches by distinguished guests. A bronze medal, a certificate and an honorarium were given to each awardee in the presence of Prof. Rolf Garz, Managing Chairman of the Eduard Rhein Foundation, named after the late Eduard Rhein (1900-1993), an inventor, author of many nonfiction books. Previous awardees include Claude Shannon, Richard Hamming, Andrew Viterbi, Tim Berners-Lee, Norman Abramson and many other well-known experts in the field of information science and technology.

On the previous day, October 14, 2005, a special colloquium was held at the Technical University of Munich hosted by Prof. Joachim Hagenauer. Our talk "35 Years of Progress in Digital Magnetic Recording" by Drs. François Dolivo, Evangelos Eleftheriou and myself was presented.

"Sehr geehrter Herr Professor Gartz, Herr Dr. Goppel und Herr Dr. Hickl,
sehr geehrte Mitglieder des Kuratoriums der Eduard Rhein Stiftung,
sehr geehrte Ehrengäste, meine Damen und Herren:

Es ist mir eine grosse Ehre und Auszeichnung, heute hier sein zu dürfen, um diesen höchst angesehen Technologie Preis entgegenzunehmen, der von Herrn Eduard Rhein vor nahezu dreissig Jahren gestiftet worden ist.

Besonders erfreulich ist es für mich, dass ich für meine früheste Arbeiten, die etwa fünfunddreissig Jahre zurückliegen, in dieser aussergewöhnlichen Weise ausgezeichnet werde.

(Professor Gartz, Dr. Goppel and Dr. Hickl,
Members of the Board of the Eduard Rhein Foundation,
Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is my great honor and privilege to be here today to receive this prestigious Technology Award endowed by the late Mr. Eduard Rhein almost 30 years ago. It is especially gratifying to be recognized in this significant way for my earliest work done 35 years ago.)

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Donald Tang, a former colleague of mine at the IBM Research Center at Yorktown Heights, New York, who introduced me to the coding problem of digital recording. He is the coauthor of my 1970 paper in which we characterized the recording system as mathematically equivalent to a special type of data transmission channel, called "partial response channel", which led to our joint invention to increase the recording density.

My special acknowledgment goes to Dr. Andrew Viterbi at the University of California at Los Angeles at that time, who introduced me to the efficient algorithm for maximum likelihood decoding of convolutional codes, now widely known as the Viterbi algorithm. An application of the basic principle of his algorithm to the partial-response system led to the second part of my invention. In many ways I was very lucky. I happened to be the first person that looked at a magnetic recording system from the communication theory point of view. Furthermore, I met the right people at the right place and at the right moment.

I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my co-recipients Dr. Francois Dolivo and Dr. Evangelos Eleftheriou, and their coworkers at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory and at IBM’s Storage Technology Division, Rochester Minnesota. As the famous American inventor Thomas Edison eloquently put it, "A genius (which I interpret as the effort for a significant invention) is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." As a former research manager, I am fully aware how difficult it is to solve all kinds of technical challenges faced in the effort to implement a seemingly simple idea into a working system. It also requires, more often than not, diplomatic and yet tenacious efforts to persuade the product division to accept our prototype system. Thus, were it not for their diligent and persistent efforts by Dr. Dolivo and his team, my theoretical concept would not have been put into practice, as we witness today.

I would also like to express my special thanks to our nominator. There are many worthy inventions and theoretical achievements that deserve recognitions. Only those who are fortunate enough to have their gracious colleagues make time-consuming effort for nominations will have the privilege of receiving recognitions like this Award.

Finally, I thank my late parents and my wife, Masae, who have been the greatest supporters of my effort as a student and then as a researcher.

Vielen herzlichen Dank für Ihre geschätzte Aufmerksamkeit.
(Thank you very much for your kind attention)."

Keynote Address at a Conference "Higher Education Reform in Japan and Germany—Taking Stock and Looking Ahead"

Keynote Address at a Conference "Higher Education Reform in Japan and Germany—Taking Stock and Looking Ahead":

I gave a keynote speech, "The Higher Education in the Age of Globalization" at the above conference held on February 28, 2006 at Hitotsubashi Memorial Hall, National Center of Science Building, Tokyo. The conference chairmen were President Hideo Miyahara of Osaka University and President Stefan Hortmuth of Giessen University, Germany. The meeting was participated by many university presidents and administrators of both Japan and Germany.

The abstract of my talk is attached below.

The Role of Higher Education in the Age of Globalization
Hisashi Kobayashi, Sherman Fairchild University Professor Princeton University,
Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

Abstract:

Excellence of a research university is dictated by three major components: outstanding faculty members, talented and motivated students, and well-managed financial and administrative support systems to facilitate innovative research and effective learning.

The university has been playing a critical role in the modern history of every industrialized nation and the world. It nurtures fine young minds to become the national and international leaders through their pursuits in politics, socio-economic sectors, as well as in their intellectual contributions in the arts and sciences.

Such fundamental missions of the university will remain largely unchanged in the future as well, but specific mechanisms to effectively implement these missions must change by taking into account various factors that surround the university. They include: responding to demographic changes in the student pool; updating knowledge and skills required for industrial competitiveness; training students for their productive employment; embracing the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of scientific research and emerging applications; and exploring the pervasive influence of networking, distributed processing and grid computing.

The higher education system of the United States, especially at the graduate level, has in the recent past been the envy of the world. But it now faces some new challenges. The recent reform of the higher education system in Japan seems to have shown some progress but a number of difficult problems remain unsolved. Germany and other EU countries are in the midst of undergoing the so-called Bologna process. In the discussion that follows this presentation, we would like to identify strategies conducive to improving higher education in Japan and Germany and to find ways to accelerate successful implementation of such strategies.