Carl Gunnar Michael Fant (October 8, 1919 - June 6, 2009) was professor emeritus at the Royal Institute of Technology

Royal Institute of Technology

The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...

 (KTH) in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

. He was a first cousin of George Fant

George Fant

George Fant was a Swedish actor. He appeared in 50 films between 1936 and 1995.-Selected filmography:* Blood and Fire * Främmande hamn * The Phantom Carriage -External links:...

.

Gunnar Fant received a Master of Science

Master of Science

A Master of Science is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is typically studied for in the sciences including the social sciences.-Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay:...

 in Electrical Engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 in 1945. He specialized in the acoustics of the human voice

Human voice

The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc. Its frequency ranges from about 60 to 7000 Hz. The human voice is specifically that part of human sound production in which the vocal folds are the primary...

, measuring formant

Formant

Formants are defined by Gunnar Fant as 'the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P|' of the voice. In speech science and phonetics, formant is also used to mean an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract...

 values, and continued to work in this area at Ericsson

Ericsson

Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...

 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

. He also took the initiative of creating a speech communication department at KTH, unusual at the time.

Gunnar Fant's work led to the birth of a new era of speech synthesis

Speech synthesis

Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...

 with the introduction of powerful and configurable formant synthesizers. In the 1960s, Gunnar Fant's Orator Verbis Electris (OVE) competed with Walter Lawrence's Parametric Artificial Talker (PAT) in creating life-like speech synthesis.

In later years, Gunnar Fant remained active in the area of speech synthesis, focusing mainly on research on prosody

Prosody (linguistics)

In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...

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Gunnar Fant received honorary doctorates from the Grenoble University (1978) and from Stockholm University

Stockholm University

Stockholm University is a state university in Stockholm, Sweden. It has over 28,000 students at four faculties, making it one of the largest universities in Scandinavia. The institution is also frequently regarded as one of the top 100 universities in the world...

 (1988), and several other awards, such as the Swedish Academy

Swedish Academy

The Swedish Academy , founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden.-History:The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III. Modelled after the Académie française, it has 18 members. The motto of the Academy is "Talent and Taste"...

 Margit Påhlson award, and the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award

IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award

The IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award is a Technical Field Award presented by the IEEE for an outstanding contribution to the advancement of speech and/or audio signal processing. It may be presented to an individual or a team of up to three people...

 (2003). He was a member
of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences or Kungl. Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien , founded in 1919 by King Gustaf V, is one of the Royal Academies in Sweden...

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External links

• Gunnar Fant's web page
• Audio clips from Dennis Klatt's "Review of text-to-speech conversion for English"