Page 34 - Winter 2010

Acoustical News
Elaine Moran
Acoustical Society of America Melville, New York 11747
Gerhard M. Sessler
James E. West
2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal Awarded to ASA members
Gerhard M. Sessler and James E. West have been named recipients of The Franklin Institute 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering “for the invention and development of the first practical elec- tret microphone, which can inexpen- sively be made small enough to fit into cellular phones, digital cameras, and other portable devices.” The award will be presented in April 2010.
Founded in honor of America’s first scientist, Benjamin Franklin, The Franklin Institute is one of America’s oldest and premier centers of science education and development in the U.S. Its mission is to inspire an understand- ing of and passion for science and tech- nology learning. Through the Franklin Institute Awards, The Franklin Institute seeks to broaden public awareness and encourage an under- standing of the world of science and technology.
At Bell Labs in 1962, James West and Gerhard Sessler patented the elec- tret microphone, in which thin sheets of polymer film, metal-coated on one side, are given a permanent charge to serve as the membrane and bias of a condenser microphone that helps con- vert sound to electrical signals with high fidelity. Almost 90 percent of the
more then two billion microphones produced today are based on the prin- ciples developed by West and Sessler.
Gerhard M. Sessler is Professor of Electroacoustics at Darmstadt University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany. He has about 300 publications in scientific and technical journals and in conference proceedings and has served as Associate Editor for Acustica/acta acustica (1993- ) and the IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation since 1998. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Physical Society and mem- ber of the Audio Engineering Society and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik (German Acoustical Society). He served at Chairman of Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Akustik (German Acoustical Association) from 1984 to 1990.
Sessler received the ASA’s Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal in 1997, the Electrochemical Society’s Callinan Award (1970), the Senior Award of the IEEE Group on Audio and Electroacoustics (1971), and the Helmholtz Medaille of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik(1993). He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (USA) in 1999.
James E. West is Research Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He holds 47 U.S. and more than 200 foreign patents on various microphones and techniques for making polymer electrets. He was inducted into The National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999 for the invention of the electret microphone. He has authored more than 100 refereed papers and has contributed to several books on acoustics, solid state physics, and mate- rial science.
West is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the Board of Directors of The National
Inventors Hall of Fame, the NAE Committee on Diversity in the Engineering Workforce, and the Scientific Advisory Committee of The International Symposium on Electrets. He is a Fellow of The Acoustical Society of America, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He is the recipient of the Electrochemical Society of America Callinan Award (1970) the Senior Award (1970) of the IEEE Group on Acoustics, the Lewis Howard Latimer Light Switch and Socket Award (1989) of the National Patent Law Association, He received the ASA Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics (1995) and the ASA Gold Medal in 2006. In 2002 he was The Audio Engineering Society Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecturer. In 2008 he was awarded the 2006 National Medal of Technology, the United States highest honor for techno- logical innovation.
Jim West served as President of the Acoustical Society of America (1998- 99), member of the Executive Council (1989-92), and Chair of the Technical Committee on Engineering Acoustics (1974-77). He was Cochair of the First Pan American/ Iberoamerican Meeting on Acoustics jointly sponsored by ASA, the Mexican Institute of Acoustics, and the Iberoamerican Federation of Acoustics in 2000.
30 Acoustics Today, January 2010