Rom Rubenovich Varshamov (Russian ??? ????????? ????????; Born April 9, 1927 in Tbilisi; Died August 24, 1999 in Moscow) was a Soviet Armenian mathematician who worked in Coding theory, especially on error-correcting codes and Number theory.
Varshamov studied in Tbilisi with Arnold Walfisz (where he was Georgian
students’ champion in the 100 metres), as well as in
Tomsk.
After that, he was a researcher in Moscow at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics with Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov, especially
on Number theory and Coding theory, and the Ministry of Radio Engineering
(working in Cryptography).
In 1957 he proved the Gilbert-Varshamov bound for
linear codes (independently of Edgar Gilbert who proved the non-linear part).
From 1968 he worked in Yerevan and was director of the Computer Centre (now Institute for Informatics and Automation Problems) of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR.
He was author and co-author of more than 25 scientific articles and also a member of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences.