Kenneth N. Stevens
American phonetician (1924–2013)

Kenneth Noble Stevens (March 24, 1924 – August 19, 2013) was the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and professor of health sciences and technology at the research laboratory of electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Stevens was head of the speech communication group in MIT's research laboratory of electronics (RLE), and was one of the world's leading scientists in acoustic phonetics.
He was awarded the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton in 1999, and the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award in 2004.
He died in 2013 from complications of Alzheimer's disease.
Education
Early education
Ken Stevens was born in Toronto on March 23, 1924. His older brother, Pete, was born in England; Ken was born four years later, shortly after the family emigrated to Canada. His childhood ambition was to become a doctor, because he admired an uncle who was a doctor. He attended high school at a school attached to the department of education at the University of Toronto.
Stevens attended college in the school of engineering at the University of Toronto on a full scholarship. He lived at home throughout his undergraduate years.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kenneth N. Stevens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.