Jesse Russell

Jesse Eugene Russell (born April 26, 1948) is an American inventor. He was trained as an electrical engineer at Tennessee State University and Stanford University, and worked in the field of wireless communication for over 20 years. He holds patents and continues to invent and innovate in the emerging area of next generation broadband wireless networks, technologies and services, often referred to as 4G. Russell was inducted into the US National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the field of wireless communication. He pioneered the field of digital cellular communication in the 1980s through the use of high power linear amplification and low bit rate voice encoding technologies and received a patent in 1992 for his work in the area of digital cellular base station design.

Jesse Eugene Russell was born April 26, 1948, in Nashville, Tennessee in the United States of America into a large African-American family with eight brothers and two sisters. He is the son of Charles Albert Russell and Mary Louise Russell. His early childhood was spent in economically and socially deprived neighborhoods within the inner-city of Nashville. During his early years, he focused on athletics and not academics. A key turning point in Russell's life was the opportunity to attend a summer educational program at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Russell participated in this educational opportunity and began his academic and intellectual pursuits. Russell continued his education at Tennessee State University where he focused on electrical engineering. A Bachelor of Science Degree (BSEE) in Electrical Engineering was conferred in 1972 from Tennessee State University. As a top honor student in the School of Engineering, Russell became the first African American to be hired by AT&T Bell Laboratories directly from a Historically Black College or University (HBCUs) and subsequently became the first African-American in the United States to be selected as the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer of the Year in 1980. Russell continued his academic pursuits and earned a Master of Electrical Engineering (MSEE) degree from Stanford University in 1973.