Peter D. Welch was a scientist and researcher in the area of

computer simulation Computer simulation is the running of a mathematical model on a computer, the model being designed to represent the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be determin ...

, as well as

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematics, mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and Industrial sector, industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a ...

applied statistics Statistics (from German: ', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or socia ...

, and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. A former IBM researcher, he is best known for his work with

Welch's method Welch's method, named after Peter D. Welch, is an approach for spectral density estimation. It is used in physics, engineering, and applied mathematics for estimating the power of a signal at different frequencies. The method is based on the c ...

to reduce

signal noise In electronics, noise is an unwanted disturbance in an electrical signal. Noise generated by electronic devices varies greatly as it is produced by several different effects. In particular, noise is inherent in physics and central to thermod ...

Education

Welch attended

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. He received his M.S. in Mathematics from the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

(1951), M.S. in Physics from

New Mexico State University New Mexico State University (NMSU or NM State) is a public, land-grant, research university in Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1888, it is the state's oldest public institution of higher education, and was the original land-g ...

(1956) and Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from

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 ...

(1963).

Career

Welch joined

IBM Research IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American Multinational corporation, multinational information technology company. IBM Research is headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York ...

at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he conducted research and development for over three decades. At IBM Research he worked in the areas of

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

spectral estimation In statistical signal processing, the goal of spectral density estimation (SDE) or simply spectral estimation is to estimate the spectral density (also known as the power spectral density) of a signal from a sequence of time samples of the signal ...

queueing theory Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues. A queueing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because th ...

, seismic signal processing, fast Fourier methodology,

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the task of assigning a class to an observation based on patterns extracted from data. While similar, pattern recognition (PR) is not to be confused with pattern machines (PM) which may possess PR capabilities but their p ...

, computer and communication system performance modeling, simulation output analysis, and graphics system design. Welch played a role in promoting simulation as a rigorous discipline during his service as the Simulation Department Area Editor of Operations Research (1983-1987). Welch's paper on the "use of fast Fourier transform for the estimation of power spectra" or

, has been cited over 5,000 times and remains widely used to reduce noise caused by imperfect and finite data. Welch died in 2023, at the age of 94.

Awards

Welch received the

Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger of ...

(INFORMS) Simulation Society "Distinguished Service Award" in 2010 and its "Lifetime Professional Achievement Award" in 2013. The INFORMS Lifetime Professional Achievement Award cites Welch's 62-year career marked by "contributions of fundamental importance not only in the field of computer simulation but also in the broader fields of applied mathematics, applied statistics, computer science." Since the mid-1970s, states INFORMS, "Peter has made groundbreaking contributions to the theory and practice of computer simulation, to the dissemination of knowledge in that field, and to the development of simulation-related software systems."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Welch, Peter D. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Wisconsin alumni New Mexico State University alumni Columbia University alumni IBM Research computer scientists Place of birth missing (living people) Nationality missing University of Chicago alumni