'''Eugene August Prange''' (July 30, 1917 – February 12, 2006)<ref>''U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014''</ref><ref name="legacy">[http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/goedwardsville/obituary.aspx?n=eugene-a-prange&pid=17953776 Obituary] at legacy.com, accessed 2013-05-05.</ref> was an American coding theorist, a researcher at the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory (AFCRL) in Massachusetts who "introduced many of the early fundamental ideas of algebraic coding theory"<ref>{{citation | last = Assmus | first = E. F. Jr. | contribution = Applications of algebraic coding theory to finite geometric problems | location = New York | mr = 690793 | pages = 23–32 | publisher = Dekker | series = Lecture Notes in Pure and Appl. Math. | title = Finite geometries (Pullman, Wash., 1981) | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=AyE-u8rid4IC&pg=PA23 | volume = 82 | year = 1983| isbn = 978-0-8247-1052-1 }}</ref> and was the first to investigate cyclic codes in 1957.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lin|first1=Shu|first2=Daniel J.|last2=Costello|title=Error Control Coding|isbn=978-0-13-042672-7|year=2004|publisher=Pearson Education|page=136}}</ref><ref>{{citation | last1 = Costello | first1 = Daniel J. Jr. | last2 = Forney | first2 = G. David Jr. | arxiv = cs.IT/0611112 | issue = 6 | journal = Proceedings of the IEEE | pages = 1150–1177 | title = Channel coding: The road to channel capacity | volume = 95 | year = 2007 | doi=10.1109/jproc.2007.895188| s2cid = 15968912 }}.</ref> With Andrew Gleason, he is the namesake of the Gleason–Prange theorem on the symmetries of the extended quadratic residue code.<ref>{{citation | last = Blahut | first = R. E. | author-link = R. E. Blahut | date = September 2006 | doi = 10.1109/18.133245 | issue = 5 | journal = IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory | location = Piscataway, NJ, USA | pages = 1269–1273 | publisher = IEEE Press | title = The Gleason-Prange theorem | volume = 37}}.</ref>

Prange was born in Illinois to August Prange and Eugenia Livingston.<ref>''U.S., Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Church Records, 1781-1969''</ref> He graduated from the University of Illinois and spent World War II serving his country in England as an intelligence officer. He then studied at Harvard University before joining AFCRL.<ref name="legacy"/>

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Prange, Eugene A.}} Category:1917 births Category:2006 deaths Category:University of Illinois System alumni Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Coding theorists Category:United States Air Force officers