Jozef J. Zwislocki will be honored as ‘Legend of Auditory Science’

Jozef J. Zwislocki will be honored as ‘Legend of Auditory Science’April 04, 2006Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Jozef J. Zwislocki, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Syracuse University’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, will be honored as a “Legend of Auditory Science” by the American Academy of Audiology during a special session at AudiologyNOW!, a premier event for audiologists to be held in Minneapolis April 5-8.

Zwislocki will join fellow honorees William E. Brownell of the Baylor College of Medicine, Peter Dallos of Northwestern University and Robert Galambos of the University of California-San Diego on stage April 7 to take session attendees on a journey from the roots of auditory science to a vision of what the future holds. Zwislocki was invited to participate in the session because of the landmark advances he has made in diagnostic methods in audiology.

“We wanted to highlight real stars in hearing science,” says Patrick Feeney, chair of the AudiologyNOW! program committee. “Having four of the most prominent auditory scientists in the world discuss the impact of hearing research promises to make for a historic morning.”

During his more than 60-year career, Zwislocki has had a profound impact upon the field of auditory research. Many of the nation’s top researchers have worked in Zwislocki’s internationally known laboratory, now known as Syracuse University’s Institute for Sensory Research (ISR).

A native of Poland, Zwislocki received degrees from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He served as a research fellow in the renowned Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University for six years and joined the Syracuse University faculty as a research associate professor of audiology in 1957. In 1958, he established and was named director of the Bioacoustics Laboratory in the School of Education. Zwislocki was instrumental in the transfer of the laboratory to the College of Engineering in 1963 and the establishment of ECS’ Department of Bioengineering and Neuroscience. The laboratory soon included scientists studying vision, hearing and touch, and was renamed the Laboratory of Sensory Communications; it became the Institute for Sensory Research in 1973. Zwislocki served as director of the institute until 1985.

In 1970, Zwislocki invented the “Zwislocki Coupler,” an artificial ear that determines the amount of current needed in an earphone to produce a particular sound intensity at the eardrum. The Zwislocki Coupler has been accepted as a national standard for hearing-aid earphones. He holds 12 patents, including several for ear defenders against excessive noise.

He received the Acoustical Society of America’s first Bekesy Medal in 1985 for landmark contributions in auditory science and the Hugh Knowles Prize in 1992 for distinguished achievement in the diagnosis and prevention of hearing disorders, among many other awards.

In 1990, Zwislocki was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership in the academy is regarded as the highest distinction for a U.S. scientist. In 1991, the degree of Dr. h.c. (an honorary degree) was bestowed on him by the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, Poland. In 1997, he was elected a foreign associate of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2003, he was honored by colleagues and former students during a special session at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

Zwislocki is the author of more than 200 scientific publications. His most recent, “Auditory Sound Transmission: An Autobiographical Perspective” (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), summarizes and completes his life’s work on sound transmission and analysis in the ear, beginning with the outer ear and ending on the sensory cells in the cochlea of the inner ear. Zwislocki retired from teaching in 1992, but he continues to perform research at ISR.