Gerhard M. Sessler

Gerhard M. Sessler (Rosenfeld, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, February 15, 1931) is a German inventor and scientist. Sessler invented together with James E. West the foil electret microphoneG. M. Sessler and J. E. West, Self-biased condenser microphone with high capacitance, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 34 (1962), pp. 1787-1788] at Bell Laboratories 1962 and the silicon microphone (co-inventor: D. Hohm) in 1983.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Goettingen in 1959. After working in the United States at Bell Labs until 1975, he returned to academia in Germany. From 1975 up to 2000, he worked as a professor of electrical engineering at the Darmstadt University of Technology where he invented the silicon microphone. He is an IEEE fellow and holds over 100 international patents and 18 US; the first one, US3,118,022, with James E. West, was issued on January 14, 1964. Sessler is the author/editor of several books on electrets and acoustics. Furthermore, he is well known for his over 300 scientific papers in prestigious international magazines and journals. In the year 2000, he was awarded an honary doctors degree from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

He is currently Professor emeritus at Darmstadt University of Technology and still active in research.

Awards

* George R. Stibitz Trophy, AT&T, 1993
* Helmholtz-medal of the DEGA, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik, 1993
* Silver Helmholtz-Rayleigh-medal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1997
* Induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, 1999
* Technology prize of the Eduard-Rhein-Foundation, 2007

External links

* [http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/132.html Inventor Hall of Fame Profile]
* [http://www.nt.tu-darmstadt.de/nt/index.php?id=176&L=1 Gerhard Sessler, homepage at the technical university of Darmstadt]

Sources