Kenneth N. Stevens
| Kenneth N. Stevens | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
March 24, 1924 Toronto, Ontario |
| Died | August 19, 2013 (aged 89) Clackamas, Oregon |
| Residence | US |
| Citizenship | US |
| Nationality | Canada |
| Fields | Electrical engineering, Acoustic phonetics |
| Institutions | MIT |
| Alma mater | MIT, University of Toronto |
| Doctoral advisor | Leo Beranek |
| Other academic advisors | J. C. R. Licklider, Walter A. Rosenblith |
| Doctoral students | James L. Flanagan, Abeer Alwan, Hwa-Ping Chang, Marilyn Chen, Jeung-Yoon Elizabeth Choi, Bertrand Delgutte, Laura Dilley, Carol Espy-Wilson, Helen Hanson, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Andrew Wilson Howitt, Sharlene Liu, Shinji Maeda, Joseph S. Perkell, Lawrence R. Rabiner, Stefanie Seneff, Lorin Wilde, Victor Zue |
| Notable awards | National Medal of Science (1999) |
Kenneth N. Stevens (March 24, 1924 – August 19, 2013) was the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Stevens was head of the Speech Communication Group in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and was one of the world's leading scientists in acoustic phonetics.
He was awarded the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton in 1999, and the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award in 2004.
He died in 2013 from complications of Alzheimer's disease.
Ken Stevens was born in Toronto on March 23, 1924. His older brother, Pete, was born in England; Ken was born four years later, shortly after the family immigrated to Canada. His childhood ambition was to become a doctor, because he admired an uncle who was a doctor. He attended high school at a school attached to the Department of Education at the University of Toronto.
Stevens attended college in the School of Engineering at the University of Toronto on a full scholarship. He lived at home throughout his undergraduate years. Though Stevens himself could not fight in World War II because of his visual impairment, his brother was away for the entire war; his parents tuned in nightly to the BBC for updates. Stevens majored in engineering physics at the university, covering topics from the design of motorized machines through to basic physics, which was taught by the physics department. During summers he worked in the defense industry, including one summer at a company that was developing radar. He received both his S.B. and S.M. degrees in 1945.
Stevens had been a teacher since his undergraduate years, when he lectured sections of home economics that involved some aspect of physics. After receiving his master's degree, he stayed at the University of Toronto as an instructor, teaching courses to young men returning from the war, including his own older brother. He was a fellow of the Ontario Foundation from 1945 to 1946, then worked as an instructor at the University of Toronto until 1948.
During his Master's research Stevens became interested in control theory, and took courses from the applied mathematics department, where one of his professors recommended that he should apply to MIT for doctoral studies.
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