Robert L. White (1927 – December 10, 2023) was an American professor of

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, and

cochlear implant A cochlear implant (CI) is a surgically implanted Neuroprosthetics, neuroprosthesis that provides a person who has moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss with sound perception. With the help of therapy, cochlear implants may allow for imp ...

pioneer. After becoming an expert in

magnetics Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that occur through a magnetic field, which allows objects to attract or repel each other. Because both electric currents and magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, m ...

and a professor at

Stanford Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth governor of and th ...

, White switched to working on cochlear implants. In 1964, he and surgeon Blair Simmons made a six-electrode device directly implanted into the auditory nerve in the modiolus, as opposed to the more modern approach through the scalae of the cochlea. He continued to work with Simmons for decades on developing multi-channel implants of various sorts, and testing them with human subjects.

References

American electrical engineers 1927 births 2023 deaths {{US-engineer-stub