Occasionally, the Marconi Society Lifetime Achievement Award is bestowed on legendary late-career individuals, recognizing their transformative contributions and remarkable impacts to the field of communications and to the development of the careers of students, colleagues and peers, throughout their lifetimes. So far, the recipients include Claude E. Shannon (2000, died in 2001), William O. Baker (2003, died in 2005), Gordon E. Moore (2005), Amos E. Joel Jr. (2009, died in 2008), Robert W. Galvin (2011, died in 2011), and Thomas Kailath (2017).