|
Ray Dolby founder and Chairman of Dolby Laboratories Inc. was born in Portland Oregon in 1933. From 1949 to 1952 he worked on various audio and instrumentation projects at Ampex Corporation where from 1952 - 57 he was mainly responsible for the development of the electronic aspects of the Ampex videotape recording system. In 1957 he received a BS degree from Stanford University and upon being awarded a Marshall Scholarship and a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship left Ampex for further study at Cambridge University in England. He received a PhD degree in physics from Cambridge in 1961 and was elected a Fellow of Pembroke College (Honorary Fellow 1983). During his last year at Cambridge he was also a consultant to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.
In 1963 Ray took up a two-year appointment as a United Nations advisor in India then returned to England in 1965 to establish Dolby Laboratories in London. In 1976 he moved to San Francisco where his company established further offices laboratories and manufacturing facilities. He holds more than 50 US patents and has written papers on videotape recording long wavelength X-ray analysis and noise reduction.
Ray is a Fellow and past President of the Audio Engineering Society and a recipient of its Silver and Gold Medal Awards. He is also a Fellow of the British Kinematograph Sound and Television Society and an Honorary Member of The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers which in the past has also awarded him its Samuel L. Warner Memorial Award Alexander M. Poniatoff Gold Medal and Progress Medal. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted him a Scientific and Engineering Award in 1979 and an Oscar in 1989 when he was also presented an Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 1986 Ray was made an Honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).
In 1997 Ray received the US National Medal of Technology the IEEE's Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award and the American Electronic Association's Medal of Achievement. That year he also received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Cambridge University and in 1999 was awarded an honorary Doctor of the University degree by the University of York.
Ray makes his home in San Francisco with his wife Dagmar Dolby and enjoys skiing sailing and flying airplanes and helicopters. Ray and Dagmar have two sons Tom and David. | 