Stevens, Stanley Smith

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology, Recording

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b. 4 November 1906 Ogden, Utah, USA

d. 18 January 1973 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

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American psychophysicist, proponent of " Stevens Law" of sensory magnitude, and developer of the technology of hearing and acoustics.

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Of Mormon origins, Stevens graduated PhD in physiology from Harvard in 1933. After a further fellowship in physiology and a research fellowship in physics, he became an instructor in experimental psychology. At the beginning of the Second World War he founded the PsychoAcoustic Laboratory at Harvard, which grew into the Laboratory of Psychophysics, and in 1962 he became the first Professor of Psychophysics.

Originally his research concentrated on sound and communication, but it later enlarged to embrace the whole range of sensory phenomena. It was his earlier studies that established the law relating sensory magnitude to stimulus magnitude. His studies of the loudness scale and its relationship to the decibel scale were significant in the development of the electronic hearing aid.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

National Academy of Sciences 1946. Society of Experimental Psychologists Warren Medal 1943. American Psychological Association Science Award 1960.

Bibliography

1938, Hearing: Its Psychology and Physiology.

Further Reading

1951, Handbook of Experimental Psychology.

MG