History of Speech and Language Technology

Gunnar Fant is Professor Emeritus and a Senior Research Fellow in Department of Speech, Music and Hearing at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). He has long been involved in a broad range of speech communication research covering speech production theory, speech synthesis and acoustic phonetics. Following his work at the Acoustical Laboratory and Physics Department of MIT, he returned to Sweden where he oversaw the creation of the Speech Communication Department at KTH. He has published over 200 articles and books in the area of speech technology. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, and he is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. His extensive honors and awards, starting with the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, gold medal, 1959, include the L M Ericsson prize in telecommunication, 1985; the Royal Swedish Academy, Margit Påhlson award for advanced contributions to the Swedish Language, 1995; and the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, IVA. Gold medal, great size, 1998.

Additional information on Professor Fant can be found at:
http://www.speech.kth.se/~gunnar/index.html
and at:
http://www.speech.kth.se/~gunnar/cv2003.html

Professor Fant had planned on attending Interspeech 2005, the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, September 4-8, 2005, where he was to take part in the "Panel: History of Speech Technology" chaired by Janet M. Baker: He was unable to attend, but sent a paper which was read by Louis Pols.

Text of paper: Speech Technology and Research: Retrospect and Prospect