Alvin Meyer Liberman (May 10,1917- January 13, 2000) was born in St. Joseph. Liberman was a psychologist. His ideas set the agenda for 50 years of psychological research in speech perception.

Liberman received his B.A. degree from the University of Missouri in 1938, his M.A. degree from the University of Missouri in 1939 and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University in 1942. His ideas and research in the psychology of speech perception laid the groundwork for modern computer speech synthesis and the understanding of critical issues in cognitive science.

He was a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and of linguistics at Yale University as well as president of Haskin Laboratories from 1975 through 1986. He had a goal of producing the sound output of a reading     machine for the blind, a device that could scan, print and produce a selective acoustic pattern for every component of the English alphabet. Also while at Haskins he came up with the idea that we hear spoken words much differently than sounds. It was evident to Liberman that speech, the speed at which someone says something in particular, is connected to the words amount of syllables, or its acoustic complexity. Liberman and his colleagues were also training the blind to read using a reading machine that would replace each letter of the alphabet with a specific sound. His paper on the “Perception of the Speech Code” in 1967 remains one of the most cited papers in psychological literature. Dr. Liberman is also known for other pioneering works in collaboration with others. He was a member of the National Academy of Science and of many other distinguished scientific societies. After retiring he remained an active, influential presence in the international scientific community.