Business and technologyאברהם למפל

Abraham Lempel

Abraham Lempel was an Israeli computer scientist who developed the Lempel-Ziv data compression algorithm with Jacob Ziv.

1936 to 2023The Lempel-Ziv compression algorithmFounding HP Labs IsraelTechnion computer science research

Born: 10 February 1936, Lviv
Died: 3 February 2023
Occupation: cryptographer, computer scientist, university teacher
Education: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Abraham Lempel was born in 1936 in Lviv

Lempel was born in 1936 in Lwów, Poland, now Lviv in Ukraine, to Yitzhak and Frida Lempel. He immigrated to Israel in 1948 and grew up on Kibbutz Yagur.

He studied at the Technion. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1963, a master's degree in 1965 and a doctorate in electrical engineering in 1967.

In 1977 he became a full professor at the Technion, and he was dean of its computer science faculty from 1981 to 1984. That year he and Jacob Ziv published the LZ77 algorithm, and with LZ78 their work led to formats such as GIF, PNG and 7-Zip. He holds 8 United States patents.

He joined Hewlett-Packard Labs in 1993 and founded its Israeli branch in Haifa in 1994, leading it until 2007. In 1997 he founded the National Infrastructure Forum. He died in February 2023 and was buried at Kibbutz Yagur.