James Loton Flanagan (August 26, 1925 – August 25, 2015) was an American electrical engineer. He was

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

's vice president for research until 2004. He was also director of Rutgers' Center for Advanced Information Processing and the Board of Governors Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is known for co-developing

adaptive differential pulse-code modulation Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise rati ...

(ADPCM) with P. Cummiskey and

Nikil Jayant Nikil S. Jayant (1945 -- ) is an Indian-American communications engineer. He was a prominent long-term researcher at Bell Laboratories and subsequently a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Communicatio ...

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...

Biography

Flanagan was born in

Greenwood, Mississippi Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta region, approximately 96 miles north of the state capital, Jackson, and 130 miles south of the riverp ...

. He received a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering in 1948 at

Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a public land-grant research university adjacent to Starkville, Mississippi. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

. Afterwards, he started as a graduate student in the Acoustics Laboratory at MIT where he got his master's degree in 1950 and, after a two-year break teaching at Mississippi State, received his Ph.D. in 1955. He was chosen as the 2005 recipient of the Research and Development Council of New Jersey's Science/Technology Medal. He worked at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

for 33 years before he joined Rutgers. He has worked in voice communications, computer techniques, and electroacoustic systems. At Bell Laboratories he was the department head of the Acoustics Research Department for many years, and managed and supported work such as James E. West's invention of the

electret microphone An electret microphone is a type of electrostatic capacitor-based microphone, which eliminates the need for a polarizing power supply by using a permanently charged material. An ''electret'' is a stable dielectric material with a permanently em ...

Bishnu S. Atal Bishnu S. Atal (born 1933) is an Indian physicist and engineer. He is a noted researcher in acoustics, and is best known for developments in speech coding. He advanced linear predictive coding (LPC) during the late 1960s to 1970s, and developed ...

's work on speech coding, David Berkley and Gary Elko's work on acoustics, Jont Allen and Joe Hall's work on psychoacoustics, James D. Johnston's work on perceptual audio coding

mp3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

, work on speech synthesis, and

Lawrence Rabiner Lawrence R. Rabiner (born 28 September 1943) is an electrical engineer working in the fields of digital signal processing and speech processing; in particular in digital signal processing for automatic speech recognition. He has worked on system ...

and Aaron Rosenberg (and others) work on speech recognition. Flanagan holds the patent on the modern artificial larynx design. During his tenure, first as department head, and then Laboratory Director, many advancements in signal processing, psychoacoustics, array microphone processing, digital loudspeakers, and other pioneering achievements were reduced to practice. Flanagan has been a resident of Warren Township, New Jersey. He died on August 25, 2015.

Awards and honors

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

; * L.M. Ericsson International Prize in Telecommunications; *Doctor Honoris Causa by the

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, UPM) is a public university, located in Madrid, Spain. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Te ...

, October 1992. * The IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing award was established in 2002. *

IEEE Medal of Honor The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contributi ...

in 2005; *

Edison Medal The IEEE Edison Medal is presented by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering, or the electrical arts." It is the oldest medal in this fi ...

in 1986 of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

); * Medal of the European Speech Communication Association; * Gold Medal of the

Acoustical Society of America The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is an international scientific society founded in 1929 dedicated to generating, disseminating and promoting the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications. The Society is primarily a voluntary org ...

; * Marconi International Fellowship. He is the author of more than 200 papers and two books, and holds 50 patents. He is a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

and the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flanagan, James L. National Medal of Science laureates IEEE Medal of Honor recipients IEEE Edison Medal recipients People from Warren Township, New Jersey People from Greenwood, Mississippi Rutgers University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering 1925 births 2015 deaths Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Scientists at Bell Labs Speech processing researchers ASA Gold Medal recipients Mississippi State University alumni