Re: Frank Cooper passed away

[Malcolm Slaney <malcolm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A colleague of mine wrote this description of Frank Cooper.  He
retired to Palo Alto and I was lucky to have a few meetings with him.
I concur with Andrew.

-- Malcolm


From: Andrew Singer <singer@interval.com>
Subject: Re: Frank Cooper passed away

       Frank Cooper was Director of Haskins Labs from its creation after until
the mid 1970's.  He was probably best known as the principal designer of
the Pattern Playback, the first speech synthesizer to be based on spectral
features, but he made many other contributions to speech research and he
did indeed serve on the "18 minute gap" team.  He was also one of the best
research managers I've ever worked for or known.

       A deeply humble person, Frank (I almost wrote "Dr. Cooper", I
was much too junior to call him Frank when I worked for him in the
mid-60's) was
nevertheless *the* driving force for the research staff at Haskins.  He did
this so quietly, it almost seemed like his hand was invisible.  He was
equally respected by young turks and senior staffers, I think because his
primary activity was always listening.  Then, once he had a thorough
understanding, he would offer a really thoughtful comment.  These comments
were always worth listening to --- I can remember one that saved me three
weeks of work.

       Above all I remember his kindness and humanity... we have
lost one of our very best.


At 05:14 PM 8/18/99 -0400, you wrote:
> I just learned (via a Univ of Ill alum newsletter) that Frank
> Cooper, who was 90, passed away in Feb, 1999. It may be
> that this information has not been previously announced publicly.
>
> Frank Cooper was one of the members of the Nixon tape analysis team.
> I believe he was with Haskins Labs; but others, I am sure, know more than I
> about his detailed contributions.
>
> Jont
> --
> Jont B. Allen
> AT&T Labs-Research, Shannon Laboratory
> 180 Park Ave., Room E161, Florham Park NJ, 07932-0971
> 973/360-8545voice, x7111fax, http://www.research.att.com/~jba
> -My favorite URL: www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history
> -Imagination is more important than knowledge.  --Albert Einstein