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

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

'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 at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

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 rive ...

. 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 university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Mississippi State, Mississippi, Un ...

. 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, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several lab ...

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 microphone whose diaphragm forms a capacitor (historically-termed a ''condenser'') that incorporates an electret. The electret's permanent electric dipole provides a constant charge on the capacitor. Sound wave ...

, Bishnu S. Atal'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 under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

, 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 syste ...

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 science, behavior ...

; * L.M. Ericsson International Prize in Telecommunications; *Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 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 American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, and is presented to an individual or team of up to three who have made exceptional contri ...

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 an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

); * 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, NGO, 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 ...

and the

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

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