Irwin Pollack Family

Irwin Pollack Lecture Series Will Feature World-Class Speakers on Psychophysics, Cognition, and Perception

Irwin “Irv” Pollack (1925-2021) was an inimitable fixture in the Department of Psychology from his arrival in 1963 until long after he officially retired in 1995. A natural lifelong learner, Pollack was famous among friends and colleagues for his interest in and knowledge about almost any topic that came up. Unsurprisingly, then, he was also known as a devoted attendee and supporter at Department of Psychology talks, even those covering topics far removed from his own field of research.

Beginning with Pollack’s time as a civilian scientist in the U.S. Air Force (1949-1963) and continuing throughout his academic career, that field was human auditory processing. Pollack’s work provided critical insights about how the human sensory system detects, distinguishes, and interprets sounds, including speech. Many of his studies were the kind of old-school experimental psychology that can appear inaccessibly technical to outsiders: Picture research subjects in soundproof booths struggling to identify subtle variations in beeps and boops produced by early mainframe computers—then picture the mathematical analyses needed to make sense of it all. But that work, published in places like The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, has had enormous real-world relevance for fields like broadcasting and recording standards, headphone and speaker design, hearing-aid development, and countless others.

Stanley Pollack, Irwin’s son, recalls participating in some of that research as a child: Listening to beeps in the booths, collecting mainframe punch cards (the little pieces punched out of them made for great confetti at Michigan football games)—that sort of thing. Given the technicality of the work, Stanley admits he did not often truly understand it. But there were times when its real-world applications became obvious. Stanley remembers his father’s participation on a committee that helped develop the Compact Disc Digital Audio standard, for example. He also recalls the time when his dad returned from a summer stint at Bell Labs with a 45 RPM record of a computerized voice singing “Daisy Bell” (aka “Bicycle Built for Two”). It was the first time a computer had ever been taught to sing—and a moment that would be famously referenced in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

One especially impactful arm of Pollack’s work studied spoken language processing, particularly in adverse or noisy conditions. Those experiments placed participants into distracting environments and manipulated variables to determine the factors that contributed to improved (or hindered) speech comprehension. Among other insights, Pollack discovered that these factors are not all auditory in nature. For example, he found that comprehension was boosted significantly when listeners could see speakers’ faces—even listeners with no training in lip reading. These findings continue to influence fields such as animation, software design, and education (recall the concerns about hampered student learning when teachers’ faces were covered during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example).

But Pollack’s impact on the field of psychology was not limited to research. He was also celebrated for his mentoring and support of colleagues at U-M and elsewhere. Colleen Seifert, Professor of Psychology in the Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience area, recalls: “Irv Pollack was a wonderfully loyal colleague. His contributions to our research forums were warmly welcomed by experimental psychologists in the old Perry Building, and they continued unabated in East Hall following his retirement. Irv was a stalwart of our research community across disciplines, departments, and years."

When Pollack passed away in 2021, his children—Stanley, Sharron, and Phyllis—considered ways to honor his legacy. Reflecting on his decades of support and engagement at Department of Psychology talks, they decided to create a new lecture series in his name. In 2024, they made a generous donation to establish the Irwin Pollack Lecture Fund, an endowment that will enable the Department to bring in speakers from around the world whose research focuses on psychophysics, cognition, and perception.

Reflecting on the gift, Stanley Pollack says, “Although my father’s own research was narrowly focused, his interests truly were vast. He was the kind of person who could engage in conversation with almost anyone about almost anything because he was just so interested and well-versed in all things. He attended the Psychology Department talks religiously, and the connections created at those kinds of talks were incredibly important. My sisters and I thought, well, now that he can no longer attend them in person, what could be a better way to honor him than to create situations in which others can attend and build those kinds of connections?”

The inaugural Irwin Pollack Lecture will take place April 18, 2025, and will feature guest speaker David B. Pisoni (Michigan PhD, 1971). Pisoni, currently a Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Chancellor's Professor of Cognitive Science at Indiana University, Bloomington, was a doctoral student of Pollack’s whose own influential research has built upon the kinds of auditory and speech processing research Pollack helped pioneer.

If you would like to contribute to the Irwin Pollack Lecture Fund, please visit the fund’s giving page