Gerhard M. Sessler (born 15 February 1931) is a German inventor and scientist. Sessler invented together with James E. West the foil electret microphone at Bell Laboratories 1962 and the silicon microphone (co-inventor: D. Hohm) in 1983.First patent on foil electret microphone by G. M. Sessler and J. E. West.He received his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1959. After working in the United States at Bell Labs until 1975, he returned to academia in Germany. From 1975 up to 2000, he worked as a professor of electrical engineering at the Darmstadt University of Technology where he invented the silicon microphone.He received Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering of The Franklin Institute in 2010.