Bertrand Delgutte, Harvard Medical School Professor of Otolaryngology and renowned researcher in neuroscience, specializing in cochlear implants, died August 17, 2024, at Massachusetts General Hospital due to complications following a relapse of Multiple Myeloma.
Bertrand Delgutte was born in Lille, France and graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France. He had dual PhDs from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1981) and the Pierre et Marie Curie Université in Paris (1984).
Bertrand came to the United States in 1974 to pursue a PhD in Electrical Engineering at MIT. His doctoral research took place at the Eaton Peabody Labs (EPL) at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Hospital in Boston, with a focus on speech coding in the auditory nerve under the co-mentorship of Ken Stevens from the MIT Electrical Engineering department and Nelson Kiang, the EPL’s founding Director. In 1984, following a three-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre National d’Etude des Télécommunications in Brittany, France, Bertrand was recruited by Nelson Kiang to return to the Eaton Peabody Laboratory where he continued as a researcher, mentor and teacher until his passing. In 1989 he was appointed as a Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor and promoted to Professor of Otolaryngology in 2010. His work expanded the knowledge of how the auditory system processes biologically significant sounds like speech, with the goal of improving hearing aids and cochlear implants by better understanding the neural basis of auditory perception.
Dr. Delgutte mentored many graduate students in the PhD Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT) at Harvard Medical School. His former students have gone on to pursue influential research careers in academia and industry. He also served as Director and co-Director of the academic program for over 20 years.
He believed that scientific knowledge should be freely shared. While at MIT, he created and taught a course in Signal Processing for many years, and when he turned over the course to a successor, he freely shared the course materials, all of which were his own.
He loved to travel. During his youth he crossed the United States many times hitch-hiking with his life-long friend, Didier Cornille, or by Greyhound Bus or in his VW bus. His extensive travels included Egypt, the Mediterranean and Japan. During a 15 month relapse of his illness, he made 3 trips to Europe.
Bertrand loved music. He had subscriptions to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Celebrity Series in Boston, and enjoyed attending Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts in Tanglewood, as well as the Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival in Blue Hill, Maine each Summer.
Bertrand is survived by his wife, Lise Paul of Watertown, Massachusetts and his son, Lucien Delgutte, a doctoral student in Nashville, Tennessee.
Donations in lieu of flowers may be sent to Doctors Without Borders. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/