Louis "Lou" Gerstman (April 22, 1930 – March 17, 1992) was an American

neuropsychologist Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brai ...

best known for his work in

speech synthesis Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langua ...

. He was a co-inventor, along with John Kelly, of the computer portrayed as HAL 9000 in the film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''. He also worked with

Irv Teibel Irving Solomon Teibel (October 9, 1938 – October 28, 2010) was an American field recordist, graphic designer, and photographer. His company, Syntonic Research, Inc., is best known for its influential '' environments'' psychoacoustic recording ...

on Teibel's

psychoacoustic Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of the perception of sound by the human auditory system. It is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated with sound including noise, speech, ...

environments Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

recording series 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 ...

, where Gerstman was working at the time.

Early life

On April 22, 1930, Gerstman was born in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

Education

Gerstman attended the

University of Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo (commonly referred to as UB, University at Buffalo, and sometimes SUNY Buffalo) is a public university, public research university in Buffalo, New York, Buffalo and Amherst, New York, United States. ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Career

In 1950s and early 1960s, Gerstman was a researcher and consultant for

Western Electric Western Electric Co., Inc. was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company that operated from 1869 to 1996. A subsidiary of the AT&T Corporation for most of its lifespan, Western Electric was the primary manufacturer, supplier, ...

Haskins Laboratories Haskins Laboratories, Inc. is an independent 501(c) non-profit corporation, founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut, since 1970. Haskins has formal affiliation agreements with both Yale University and the University of Connecticut; ...

, and

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

during which he worked on computer speech processing to aide stroke recovery and learning disabilities. In 1966, he began teaching at City University in New York City and he became a professor at City College in 1969. At the latter, he specialized in speech processes and disorders and oversaw doctoral programs in experimental cognition. Gerstman was also an expert in "voiceprint"

spectrogram A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of a signal as it varies with time. When applied to an audio signal, spectrograms are sometimes called sonographs, voiceprints, or voicegrams. When the data are represen ...

s and testified as an expert witness in the 1973 bribery trial of

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

District Attorney

Jim Garrison James Carothers Garrison (born Earling Carothers Garrison; November 20, 1921 – October 21, 1992) was the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, from 1962 to 1973 and later a state appellate court judge. A member of the Democratic Pa ...

. In 1961, he helped create the first computer program for speech synthesis while working with

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

. The program was intended to be used in Kubrick's ''2001'', but the two parties eventually parted ways and the film crew employed an actor to read the lines.

Personal life

In March 1992, Gerstman died of lung cancer. Gerstman was 61.

Discography

*''Music From Mathematics'' (Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., 1960) * ''Synthesized Speech'' (Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., 1962)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerstman, Lou 1930 births 1992 deaths 20th-century American psychologists American neuropsychologists Scientists at Bell Labs City College of New York faculty Harvard University alumni University at Buffalo alumni New York University alumni