Rate My Professor Robert Rodman

Robert Rodman was a distinguished Professor of Computer Science at North Carolina State University, where he served for 38 years from 1979 until his retirement on January 1, 2017. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1940 and raised in Southern California, he earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a minor in physics from UCLA in 1961, a master’s degree in mathematics from UCLA, a master’s degree in linguistics from UCLA in 1965, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from UCLA in 1971. Following his undergraduate graduation, Rodman worked as a computer programmer at General Electric, contributing to the development of the first commercial nuclear reactors. He began his academic career teaching at UCLA, then moved to North Carolina in 1973 as a Professor of Linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by positions at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Duke University. At NC State, he advanced from assistant professor in 1979 to associate professor in 1983 and full professor in 1991, teaching thousands of students in courses such as discrete mathematics, computer speech recognition, synthesis, and programming.

Rodman’s research focused on computational linguistics, computer speech recognition and synthesis, forensic linguistics, and speaker verification, with pioneering contributions to voice security technology and speaker authentication. A prolific author, he co-authored the seminal textbook An Introduction to Language with Victoria Fromkin and Nina Hyams, first published in 1974 and now in its 11th edition, having sold over one million copies worldwide and translated into eight languages. He also authored Computer Speech Technology and contributed to works on forensic linguistics, including coining the term “Montague grammar,” recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002. His scholarly impact is evidenced by over 2,192 citations. Rodman received significant honors, including election as an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Social Sciences in 2009 for his achievements in computational forensic linguistics and as an associate member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in the Engineering Sciences section. He advised Ph.D. students, participated in public outreach such as writing radio scripts on linguistics for National Public Radio, and continued teaching until delivering his final lecture one month before his passing on January 15, 2017.