Max Mathews

Max Vernon Mathews ( born November 13, 1926 in Columbus, Nebraska, † April 21, 2011 in San Francisco, California ) was an American electrical engineer and pioneer of computer music.

Mathews studied electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech ) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his doctorate in 1954.

1957 played an IBM 704 computer, a 17 seconds long melody that had created its program Music I, which he had developed at Bell Laboratories. This is considered the founding date of computer music. Then he dealt further with digital audio production and computer music (from the 1970s with the advanced at the time of technological capabilities in real time) and their control during live performances, speech synthesis, robotics, physical acoustics, on learning and memory and visual communication. From 1962 to 1985 he directed the Acoustical and Behavioral Research Center at Bell Laboratories. Since 1987 he was a professor at Stanford University.

From 1974 to 1980 he was an advisor to the Institute de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique / Musique ( IRCAM ) in Paris.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, IEEE Fellow and a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society was. He received a Silver Medal in Musical Acoustics of the Acoustical Society of America and was a Knight of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.