Background
Cooley, James William was born on September 18, 1926 in New York City. Son of William F. and Anna (Fanning) Cooley.
Cooley, James William was born on September 18, 1926 in New York City. Son of William F. and Anna (Fanning) Cooley.
Bachelor of Arts, Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York, 1949; Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1951; Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University, 1961.
Cooley received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949 from Manhattan College, Bronx, New York, an Master of Arts He was a programmer on John von Neumann"s computer at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, from 1953 to 1956. He worked on quantum mechanical computations at the Courant Institute, New York University, from 1956 to 1962, when he joined the Research Staff at the International Business Machines Corporation Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New New York Upon retirement from International Business Machines Corporation in 1991, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, where he served on the faculty of the computer engineering program His most significant contribution to the world of mathematics and digital signal processing is the Fast Fourier transform, which he co-developed with John Tukey (see Cooley–Tukey FFT algorithm) while working for the research division of International Business Machines Corporation in 1965.
The motivation for it was provided by Doctor Richard L. Garwin at International Business Machines Corporation Watson Research who was concerned about verifying a Nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks talks.
Garwin thought that if he had a very much faster Fourier Transform he could plant sensors in the ground in countries surrounding the Soviet Union. He suggested the idea of how Fourier transforms could be programmed to be much faster to both Cooley and Tukey.
They did the work, the sensors were planted, and he was able to locate nuclear explosions to within 15 kilometers of where they were occurring. He considerably contributed to the establishing of terminology in digital signal processing.
J.W. Cooley was a member of the Digital Signal Processing Committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and was later awarded a fellowship of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for his work on FFT.
Married Ingrid Uddholm, May 1, 1957. Children: William, Anna-Carin, Lars.