David Thomas Kemp, FRS (born 24 February 1945) is a British physicist who is a professor working at the

UCL Ear Institute The UCL Ear Institute is an academic department of the Faculty of Brain Sciences of University College London (UCL) located in Gray's Inn Road in the Bloomsbury district of Central London, England, previously next to the Royal National Throat, ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. He was educated at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

(BSc, 1966; AKC; PhD, 1970). He discovered the phenomenon of

otoacoustic emission An otoacoustic emission (OAE) is a sound that is generated from within the inner ear. Having been predicted by Austrian astrophysicist Thomas Gold in 1948, its existence was first demonstrated experimentally by British physicist David Kemp in 19 ...

in July 1978 while working at the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital. He founded a company that makes equipment to test for hearing defects by detecting otacoustic emission, which is absent in the ears of people suffering deafness caused by neural impairment. Because the method does not require any cooperation from the subject, it is valuable for detecting deafness in babies. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in 2004.

References

External links

UCL News
1945 births Living people Academics of University College London Alumni of King's College London Associates of King's College London Fellows of the Royal Society {{UK-med-bio-stub