Emeritus Professor Irving S. Reed of USC passed away on September 11th, 2012 at the age of 88. During his career, Reed made fundamental contributions to digital communications, including the invention of the Reed-Muller codes (with David Muller) and of the Reed-Solomon codes (with Gustave Solomon), which are some of the most widely used codes for data storage and transmission. His contributions have been recognized by numerous prizes, such as the IEEE Information Theory Society Claude E. Shannon Award, the IEEE Richard W. Hamming award, and the IEEE Masaru Ibuka award.