NSL 2022 Distinguished Submariner Awardee
Mr. Martin Cooper
"Father of the Cell Phone"
is honored as a recipient of the
2024 National Medal of Technology and Innovation
2022 Awardee: Martin Cooper
for engineering and inventions of extraordinary value to the Nation.
“Marty” Cooper is known as the “father of the cell phone.” He attended the Illinois Institute of Technology on a Navy scholarship. After serving on a destroyer, he chose to become a submarine officer and served on USS Tang (SS 563), one of the last non-nuclear submarines, during the early 1950s. After leaving the Navy, he started his career as an engineer and inventor. In 1973, he and his Motorola team designed and developed the first hand-held cellular phone. He is cited as the first person in history to make a cellular phone call in public, which was from a Manhattan sidewalk to a competitor at AT&T. Marty has received many awards, including the Charles Draper Prize for Engineering and the Marconi Prize. TIME magazine named him one of the “100 Best Inventors in History.” Marty co-founded numerous communications companies with his wife and business partner, Arlene Harris. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field. He formulated the law of spectral efficiency, also known as Cooper’s law, which states that the number of voice or data transactions that occur in the radio spectrum, without interfering with each other, doubles every 30 months.
Mr. Martin Cooper is most deserving of recognition by the Naval Submarine League to receive the 2022 Distinguished Submariner Award.
About Martin Cooper
Martin Cooper is an engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist. He is known as the “father of the cell phone.” Cooper led the creation of the world’s first cell phone in 1973, at which time he made the first public cell phone call.
For nearly three decades at Motorola, Cooper contributed to the development of pagers, two-way radio dispatch systems, quartz crystal manufacturing, and more.
A serial entrepreneur, he and his wife, Arlene Harris, cofounded numerous wireless technology companies, including Cellular Business Systems, Cellular PayPhone, Subscriber Computing, SOS Wireless Communications, GreatCall, and ArrayComm. Cooper is currently chairman of Dyna LLC and a member of the FCC’s Technological Advisory Council. He was the first to observe the Law of Spectrum Capacity, which became known as Cooper’s Law.
In 2013, Cooper became a member of the National Academy of Engineering from which he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering. He was awarded the Marconi Prize “for being a wireless visionary who reshaped the concept of mobile communication.” He has been inducted into the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame and Wireless History Foundation’s Wireless Hall of Fame. The Radio Club of America awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. He is a lifetime member of the IEEE, was president of its Vehicular Technology Society and received its Centennial Medal. In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the “100 Best Inventors in History.” He is a Prince of Asturias Laureate.
His book, Cutting the Cord: The Cell Phone Has Transformed Humanity, fuses his personal story, wireless history, what the wireless world will look like 20 to 100 years from now, and what the wireless industry will become. The cellphone evolution will offer the potential for eliminating poverty, improving education for everyone, and eliminating disease. Cooper grew up in Chicago, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. He attended Crane Technical High School and the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he is a Life Trustee. He served in the U.S. Navy as a submarine officer during the Korean conflict and was honored with the Naval Submarine League’s Distinguished Submariner Award in 2022. He lives in Del Mar, California, with his wife Arlene Harris