text: Hamming attempted to rectify the situation with a new text, Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985). In 1993, he remarked that "when I left BTL, I knew that that was the end of my scientific career. When I retire from here, in another sense, it's really the end." And so it proved. He became Professor Emeritus in June 1997, and delivered his last lecture in December 1997, just a few weeks before his death from a heart attack on January 7, 1998. He was survived by his wife Wanda.
  Hamming's final recorded lecture series is maintained by Naval Postgraduate School along with ongoing work that preserves his insights and extends his legacy.
  Awards and professional recognition
  Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery, 1968.
  Member of the National Academy of Engineering, 1980.
  Harold Pender Award, University of Pennsylvania, 1981.
  IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, 1988.
  Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, 1994.
  Basic Research Award, Eduard Rhein Foundation, 1996.
  The IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal, named after him, is an award given annually by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), for "exceptional contributions to information sciences, systems and technology", and he was the first recipient of this medal. The reverse side of the medal depicts a Hamming parity check matrix for a Hamming error-correcting code.