Kenneth N. Stevens was the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Stevens was head of the Speech Communication Group in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and was one of the world's leading scientists in acoustic phonetics. He was awarded the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton in 1999, and the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award in 2004. Born in Toronto on March 23, 1924, to British-born parents, Stevens lived there until 1948, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering physics from the University of Toronto. Having lost an eye to cancer when he was four years old, Stevens was ineligible for military service during World War II, but after completing his master’s, he stayed at the university for three more years, teaching returning soldiers under the Veterans Rehabilitation Act, the Canadian equivalent of the G.I. Bill. He died in 2013 from complications of Alzheimer's disease.