Peter Ladefoged

Peter Ladefoged (1925–2006) was a Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at UCLA, specializing in phonetic documentation of endangered languages. He directed the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory and authored foundational texts like A Course in Phonetics and The Sounds of the World’s Languages. His NSF-funded fieldwork spanned Africa, India, and Australia, resulting in dictionaries and grammars for Chadic languages. He expanded the International Phonetic Alphabet and consulted for My Fair Lady.

Ladefoged contributed to speech technology, forensic phonetics, and respiratory physiology in speech. He trained 20+ PhD students, including Ian Maddieson, and received honors like the Gold Medal at ICPhS. He died during fieldwork in India in 2006.