Robert Price ’50

Bob died Dec. 3, 2008. He had lived in Lexington, Mass., for 50 years.  

Bob attended Penn Charter School. At Princeton, he was technical director of WPRU, majored in physics, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After earning a doctorate from MIT in 1953, he went to Sydney, Australia, as a Fulbright fellow in radio astronomy. Bob met his future wife, Jennifer, in 1954 while on a ship sailing from Sydney to Europe. They married in England in 1958.  

His career began at MIT’s Lincoln Labora- tory, where he co-invented a system called “RAKE,” a method of processing radio signals in a receiver critical for high-data-ratio digital transmission, now widely used in cell phones, military radio, and underwater communications. He was internationally recognized for his historical research in secure communications and was invited to the opening of the Cabinet War Rooms in London for his research on the secret telephony between Roosevelt and Churchill. His interest in the patent that actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received in 1942 relating to secure communication led to a visit to Lamarr in New York and communications with her for several years.

We extend our sympathy to Jennifer, and their sons, Stephen, Colin, and Edmund.