Irwin M. Jacobs was born in 1933 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In 1956 he completed his B.S. degree in electrical engineering at Cornell University, and went on to earn his S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1957 and 1959.
Jacobs taught at MIT from 1959 until 1966 and at the University of California in San Diego from 1966 until 1972. The UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering is named in honor of Jacobs and his wife.
In 1985 Jacobs co-founded Qualcomm where he developed a satellite-based communications protocol called CDMA, Code Division Multiple Access. CDMA is thought of as one of the fastest growing wireless technologies and became the industry standard for cellular telecommunications.
On March 3, 2009 Jacobs announced that he was leaving his position as chairman of Qualcomm and his son Paul E. Jacobs took over the leadership of the company.