The award recognizes Gallager's pioneering contribution to information and coding theory and the citation mentions the wide impact that low-density parity-check codes have had on digital communications and digital storage systems.   The award ceremony will be held in Tokyo on April 15. Each winner will receive a prize of ¥50 million.

Gallager received the Shannon Award from the Information Theory Society in 1983, and was the Society president in 1971.  He is professor emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

Read more about the award at the Japan Prize site and The Japan Times .