Dave Green and psychoacoustics

Abstract

Dave Green’s career spanned four decades all devoted to the study of psychoacoustics. It is hard to imagine anyone whose work has had a greater impact on the field. Dave’s interest in psychoacoustics began as an Experimental Psychology student at the University of Michigan. He is most widely recognized in the field of psychophysics for his pioneering contributions to Signal Detection Theory (SDT), which he helped develop in the Electronic Defense Group (EDG) of the Department of Electrical Engineering in the early 1950s. The culmination of this work is given in his seminal text “Signal Detection Theory and Psychophysics” (co-authored with John Swets) in 1966. His later work on Profile Analysis in the 1980s helped established a new view of auditory perception. As a consultant for Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BB&N), Dave provided numerous publications and reports that have served beneficial to society, including his testimony regarding the reenactment of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1979. More than 50 students, post-docs, and colleagues, many who have made important contributions to psychoacoustics, have worked directly in Dave’s labs and received his mentoring. To say that Dave Green is a psychoacoustic icon would be an understatement.