Obituaries - Oct. 14, 1999

Joao Cabral Melo Neto; Poet, Envoy

Joao Cabral Melo Neto, 79, a Brazilian poet known for his simple language and form who was the winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1992. Bored by most music and other artistic sounds, Cabral considered poetry a written rather than oral art form. His work emphasized syntax rather than phonetics and lyricism, which distinguished him from other Brazilian poets. After publishing two collections of verse, Cabral joined Brazil’s diplomatic service in 1945. During a career that spanned four decades, he held diplomatic posts in Spain, Britain, Switzerland and Paraguay before being appointed ambassador to Senegal and then Honduras. The author of more than 25 books of poetry, Cabral was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1968 and awarded the Sao Paulo Literary Prize in 1992. He moved to Rio de Janeiro after retiring from the diplomatic service in 1987. In recent years he had been in fragile health and was nearly blind. On Saturday in Rio.

David A. Huffman; Computer Pioneer

David A. Huffman, 74, a pioneer in the field of computer science who created the basic compression method used in transmitting and storing digital information. Huffman developed the Huffman Coding Procedure, a method used today to compact the stream of 1s and 0s that make up digital information. He developed the technique while he was a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Today, his technique is used in nearly every application that involves digital transmission, including fax machines, modems, computer networks and high-definition television. Huffman joined the MIT faculty in 1953 after completing his graduate work. In 1967, he went to UC Santa Cruz, where he helped found the department of computer science. He served as chairman of the department from 1970 to 1973 and retired in 1994. While he was a professor at UC Santa Cruz, Huffman specialized in the fields of information theory, signal design for radar, and logic circuit design. He was awarded the Richard W. Hamming Medal from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers earlier this year for his work in information science. Huffman also received the Computer Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computer Society and the Golden Jubilee Award for Technological Innovation from the IEEE Information Theory Society. Huffman was born in Ohio and earned a degree in electrical engineering at the age of 17. He served in the U.S. Navy as a radar maintenance officer on a destroyer. On Oct. 7 in Santa Cruz of cancer.