A Biography of Pixel | Aeon Essays

“Perhaps the most unexpected person in this story – at least for readers in the United States – is Vladimir Kotelnikov, the man who turned Fourier’s idea into the pixel. […] Early in his career, Kotelnikov showed how to represent a picture with what we now call pixels. His beautiful and astonishing sampling theorem, published in 1933, is the foundation of the modern picture world.”

Read the Article | Aeon Essays | Alvy Ray Smith

An extended article on Kotelnikov’s life and work can be found in an article published in 2009 in IEEE Communications Magazine as a part of the History of Communications. No paywall on this one :-).

C. Bissell, "Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kotelnikov: pioneer of the sampling theorem, cryptography, optimal detection, planetary mapping... [History of Communications]," in IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 47, no. 10, pp. 24-32, October 2009, doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2009.5273804.

Engraved portrait of French mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768 - 1830), early 19th century.Louis-Léopold Boilly, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Used as a thumbnail image