Irwin M. Jacobs

Jacobs was born to a Jewish family in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He earned his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1956, and his Master of Science and Doctor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1957 and 1959, respectively. His doctoral advisor was Edward Arthurs. He is a member of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.

Jacobs was assistant and associate professor of electrical engineering at MIT from 1959 to 1966 and professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) from 1966 to 1972. With John Wozencraft, he co-authored a textbook entitled Principles of Communication Engineering in 1965, which is still in use today. UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering is named for him and his wife.

In 1968, Jacobs co-founded Linkabit Corporation with Andrew Viterbi to develop satellite encryption devices. That company merged with M/A-COM, Inc. in 1980, becoming M/A-COM Linkabit.

In 1985, Jacobs went on to co-found Qualcomm Inc. along with Viterbi, Harvey White, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, and Franklin Antonio. Qualcomm developed the OmniTRACS system that was deemed one of the world's most "technologically advanced two-way mobile satellite communications and tracking systems". He pioneered these systems which use the communication bandwidth more efficiently than the older fixed time-sliced TDMA technology. Its Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) has been adopted as one of two digital standards (the other being Global System for Mobile Communications [GSM]) used in the next generation of cellular telephones in North America at the time. Jacobs announced in March 2009 that he had stepped down as chairman of Qualcomm and that Paul E. Jacobs, his son, would succeed him.

In 1954, Jacobs married Joan Klein. The couple resided in La Jolla, California, and had four sons. Their son Paul E. Jacobs succeeded Irwin as CEO of Qualcomm until stepping down in March 2014. Their eldest son, Gary E. Jacobs, is the head of the board of the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High Charter School. His granddaughter, Sara Jacobs, a Democratic politician, is the representative for California's 51st congressional district. During her political campaigns, she received significant funding from her grandfather.

As the co-founder and chairman of Qualcomm, Jacobs has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the field of education through donations and grants to several schools and organizations. His donations have gone mostly towards fellowships and scholarships for students in the fields of engineering and computer science, as well as the arts, and are focused in the San Diego area. The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2011 dubbed him the "Philanthropist in Chief".

As of September 2009, Jacobs had donated a total of $31 million to his post graduate degrees school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He had donated $15 million and another $110 million to the University of California, San Diego where he was a professor of computer science and engineering for several years. Additionally, he has donated $62 million total to the American Society for Technion, his alma mater Cornell University, and KPBS Radio and Television. His KPBS donation was in the sum of $1 million, and the multi-year gift is designed to strengthen the station's local journalism and news collaboration with NPR. The Jacobs have donated funds to build studios for KPBS and have supported the station for decades. In 2010, he funded an engineering study on how to fulfill a proposal to remove automobiles from the Plaza de Panama in San Diego's Balboa Park and agreed to chair a committee to study the proposal and develop private funding for it.

Irwin and Joan Jacobs donated $5 million in 2002 to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego downtown location for the renovation of the former train station baggage building which was named in their honor.

Jacobs has pledged $120 million for the San Diego Symphony, a similar amount for the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, $100 million for UCSD's future specialty hospital and $20 million to replace the central library in downtown San Diego. Also in 2005, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for the La Jolla Playhouse was named after Jacobs and his wife in honor of their philanthropic contributions towards the institution's development.

In April 2013, the Jacobs donated $133 million to the joint Cornell Tech campus development on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

The Joan and Irwin Jacobs TIX Institute at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, was sponsored by Jacobs with the mission of encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation announced in January 2022 that it was renaming its list of pending United States Supreme Court cases the "Joan and Irwin Jacobs Supreme Court Docket" in honor of the couple's $20 million gift, the largest one-time endowment gift in the organization's history.