The Hecker family survived the war in Hamburg. In 1947, Mrs. Hecker took her three children on a long voyage to New York. She wanted to visit her mother, an artist who had left Germany shortly before the war began. The travelers stayed almost ten months in Switzerland, waiting for new immigration permits. In 1950, Mr. Hecker left Hamburg and joined his family in New York. Michael became an American citizen in 1953 and received his high school diploma in 1954.
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, with Honors, Northeastern University, 1959.
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1961.
Doctor of Philosophy in Speech and Hearing Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, 1974.
Senior Research Engineer, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc., Cambridge, MA ~ 1961-1962; 1964-1968.
Project Officer, Voice Security Branch, U.S. Army Electronics Research and Development Laboratories, Fort Monmouth, NJ ~ 1962-1964.
Senior Research Engineer, Senior Behavioral Scientist, SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), Menlo Park, CA ~ 1968-1995.
Lieutenant Hecker's contributions to the design of secure speech-communication systems for the U.S. Army were formally acknowledged by the Commander of the Laboratories. Many years later, Hecker was named a Lifetime Achiever by Marquis Who's Who.
Speaker Recognition - An Interpretive Survey of the Literature.
(Published by the American Speech and Hearing Association.)
1971Speech Evaluation in Medicine. Speech Evaluation in Psychiatry.
(Served as Principal Scientific Consultant to the Editor.)
1981Published many original articles in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and the APS Journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
Acoustical Society of America (fellow, chairman of Technical Committee on Speech Communication); American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (member); American Psychological Association (member); American Academy of Forensic Sciences (fellow).
Senior Research Engineer; Senior Behavioral Scientist
