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Dr. James Cooley (born 1926) is an American mathematician. James W. Cooley received a B.A. degree in 1949 from Manhattan College, Bronx, NY, an M.A. degree in 1951 from Columbia University, New York, NY, and a Ph.D. degree in 1961 in applied mathematics from Columbia University. He was a programmer on John von Neumann's computer at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, from 1953 to 1956. He worked on quantum mechanical computations at the Courant Institute, New York University, from 1956 to 1962, when he joined the Research Staff at the IBM Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. Upon retirement from IBM in 1991, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, where he served on the faculty of the computer engineering program.
His most significant contribution to the world of mathematics and digital signal processing is the Fast Fourier transform, which he co-developed with John Tukey (see Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm) while working for the research division of IBM in 1965.
The motivation for it was provided by Dr. Richard L. Garwin at IBM Watson Research who was concerned about verifying a Nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union for the SALT talks. Garwin thought that if he had a very much faster Fourier Transform he could plant sensors in the ground in countries surrounding the Soviet Union. He suggested the idea of how Fourier transforms could be programmed to be much faster to both Cooley and Tukey. They did the work and the sensors were planted in the ground in countries surronding the Soviet Union. As a result he was able to detect nuclear explosions within a 15 kilometer radius of where they were occurring.
Jim was a member of the Digital Signal Processing Committee of the IEEE, and was later awarded a fellowship of IEEE for his work on FFT. J.W. Cooley considerably contributed to the establishing of terminology in digital signal processing.
"James Cooley"