After World War II, Cooper, son of Ukrainian immigrants, left the navy and began working at Teletype Corporation, a subsidiary of Western Electric. In 1950, he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). In 1954, he was hired by Motorola, and attended classes and studied at night. He went on to earn a master's degree in electrical engineering from IIT in 1957, and taught night school classes at the university.In 1960, John F. Mitchell, who also received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering (1950) from IIT, became chief engineer of Motorola's mobile communications projects.
Cooper reported to Mitchell. In the 1960s, Cooper was instrumental in turning pagers from a technology used in single buildings to one that stretched across cities. Cooper helped fix a flaw in the quartz crystals Motorola made for its radios. This encouraged the company to mass-produce the first crystals for use in wrist watches. Cooper worked on developing portable products, including the first portable handheld police radios, made for the Chicago police department in 1967.
In the early 1970s, Mitchell put Cooper in charge of its car phone division where he led Motorola's cellular research. Cooper envisioned mobile phones that would be used not only in a car, but also small and light enough to be portable. Thanks to years of research and development in portable products directed by Cooper and new technologies from all over the company, when the pressure was on, it took only 90 days in 1973 to create the first portable cellular 800 MHz phone prototype.
After demonstrating the prototype cell phone to reporters, Cooper allowed some of the reporters to make phone calls to anyone of their choosing to prove that the cell phone could function as a versatile part of the telephone network.
Cooper is considered the inventor of the first handheld cellular phone and the first person to make a phone call in public on a handheld cell phone. Cooper and the engineers who worked for him, and Mitchell are named on the patent "Radio telephone system" filed on October 17, 1973.In 1995, Cooper received the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for his technological innovations in the communication field. Cooper is also a member of Mensa. Martin Cooper was mentioned in Red Herring’s Top ten Entrepreneurs of 2000. In 2009, along with Raymond Tomlinson, Cooper received the Prince of Asturias Award for scientific and technical research. In February 2010, Cooper was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He is an IIT Life Trustee.
