Valery Goppa

Valery Denisovich Goppa (Вале́рий Дени́сович Го́ппа; born 1939 ) is a Soviet and Russian mathematician.

He discovered a relation between algebraic geometry and codes, utilizing the Riemann-Roch theorem. Today these codes are called algebraic geometry codes. In 1981 he presented his discovery at the algebra seminar of the Moscow State University.

He also constructed other classes of codes in his career, and in 1972 he won the best paper award of the IEEE Information Theory Society for his paper "A new class of linear correcting codes". It is this class of codes that bear the name of “Goppa code”.