Gerhard M. Sessler (Rosenfeld, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, February 15, 1931) is a German inventor and scientist. Sessler invented together with James E. West the foil electret microphone[1] at Bell Laboratories 1962 and the silicon microphone (co-inventor: D. Hohm) in 1983.
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 is an IEEE fellow and holds over 100 international patents and 18 US; the first one, US3,118,022, with James E. West, was issued on January 14, 1964. Sessler is the author/editor of several books on electrets and acoustics. Furthermore, he is well known for his over 300 scientific papers in prestigious international magazines and journals. In the year 2000, he was awarded an honorary doctors degree from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
He is currently Professor emeritus at Darmstadt University of Technology and still active in research.