Tadao Kasami was born on April 12, 1930 in Kobe, Japan. His father was a Buddhist monk at a temple on Mount Maya above Kobe. Tadao was expected to follow in his father's foot- steps, but his interests and abilities took him in a different direction. Tadao studied Electrical Engineering at Osaka University.  He received his B.E. degree in 1958, the M.E. degree in 1960, and the Ph.D. in 1963.  At about that time he became interested in information theory and in particular in error-correcting codes. He then became a faculty member at Osaka University, where he taught until 1994. He was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Science 1990-1992 at Osaka University. He was a professor in the Graduate School of Information Science at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology from 1992 until 1998. From then until 2004, he was a professor on the Faculty of Information Science at Hiroshima University. After retiring for the third time, he continued to work

part time at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology until a few months before his death.  

 

For his significant contributions to coding theory, he was awarded the Shannon Award for the year 2000, the highest honor given by the IEEE Information Theory Society.  

 

In 1975 he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his contributions to coding theory, automata theory, formal languages, and engineering education. In 1987, he received the Achievement Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information, and Communications Engineers of Japan.