Jacob Ziv will receive the IEEE Medal of Honor (2021) for “fundamental contributions to information theory and data compression technology, and for distinguished research leadership.”  The IEEE Medal of Honor, established in 1917, is the highest IEEE award. It is presented when a candidate is identified as having made a particular contribution that forms a clearly exceptional addition to the science and technology of concern to IEEE. 

Along with Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv developed lossless data compression algorithms Lempel-Ziv 77 in 1977 and LZ78 the following year. These highly efficient lossless compression algorithms allowed the development of compression techniques used in ZIP, PNG and GIF file formats.

Read more about Jacob Ziv's honor at IEEE Spectrum and see the ist of IEEE Medal of Honor Recipients .