LOS ANGELES-- The Hollywood Post Alliance announced that Ray Dolby, renowned inventor, engineer, and founder of Dolby Laboratories, has been named recipient of its Charles S. Swartz Award. Ray Dolby, accompanied by his family, will be honored during the 7th Annual HPA Awards ceremony on Nov. 1, 2012 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Ray’s son David Dolby will accept the award on his behalf.
“My father is deeply honored to have been chosen for this recognition,” said David Dolby. “Ray has always been committed to achieving transparency between the work of creative professionals and audiences around the world. We look forward to celebrating my father’s work and contributions at the Hollywood Post Alliance Awards.”
Leon Silverman, president of the HPA, stated, “The HPA is honored to recognize Ray Dolby, whose lifetime of creative innovation has had a profound impact on our industry and society. Through his own contributions to image and sound recording technology, and through the company he founded, Ray has played and continues to play a fundamental role in countless hours of entertainment enjoyed by audiences around the globe. His accomplishments epitomize the reason that the Charles S. Swartz award was created.”
The HPA Awards were launched in 2006 and have become a standard by which creative and technical excellence in the art, science and craft of post production is measured. The Charles S. Swartz Award was created to honor a person, group, company or technology that has made a significant artistic, technological, business or educational impact on post production. The mission of this award is to recognize broad and lasting contributions that have advanced and/or provided some unique purpose to the field of post production.
Ray Dolby was born in Portland, Ore., in 1933. While still in high school, he worked at Ampex Corp. in California, where he focused on audio and instrumentation projects and was primarily responsible for the development of the electronic aspects of the Ampex videotape recording system. He received his BS degree from Stanford University in 1957 and earned a PhD in physics from Cambridge University in England in 1961. In 1963, Ray took up a two-year appointment as a United Nations advisor in India. Returning to England in 1965, he established Dolby Laboratories in London, where he created the renowned Dolby A-Type noise reduction system. In 1976, Ray moved to San Francisco and established offices, laboratories, and manufacturing facilities where his team focused on the development of technology for film and other industries, among them the Dolby Digital Surround Sound system used by tens of thousands of movie theaters worldwide.
Ray’s accomplishments and those of his company are extensive and legendary. He is a Fellow and past president of the Audio Engineering Society, and a recipient of its Silver and Gold Medal Awards. He is an Honorary Member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and a recipient of 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 Academy Award in 1989, when he was also presented an Emmy Award by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Additional industry honors Ray has received include the 2004 Médaille du Festival de Cannes and the 2012 Berlinale Camera award. A holder of more than 50 patents, Ray was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1995, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2004. He served as chairman of Dolby’s Board of Directors from 1965 until 2009, and retired from the Board in 2011.
The award to be presented to Ray Dolby was named in honor of the late Charles S. Swartz, who led the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California from 2002 until 2006 and helped to build it into the industry’s premier test bed for new digital cinema technologies. Charles was a member of the Hollywood Post Alliance Board of Directors until his passing in 2007. The Charles S. Swartz Award is not bestowed every year, but rather as worthy recipients are identified. Ray Dolby is just the third recipient in the history of the HPA Awards.
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