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It's not often that a physicist wins a Grammy award. But Kevin Short, who earned his BS in Physics along with a BA in Geological Sciences from the University of Rochester in 1985, scored a Grammy on February 10, 2008. Kevin is currently a professor of mathematics at the University of New Hampshire and won his Grammy for being the master engineer on a team that restored a 1949 wire recording of a Woody Guthrie concert. He attended the ceremony, and with his wife Michelle, represented science in a lavish concert hall adorned with the singing stars of today.

During his undergraduate days at the University of Rochester, Kevin was elected to the 1984 College Division Academic All-American Baseball Team. In December of the same year, he won a Marshall Scholarship and came close to winning a Rhodes Scholarship. He later earned his PhD at Imperial College in London for research into general relativity and mathematical physics.

Until he won his Grammy Award, Kevin was most famous for discovering Chaotic Compression Technology, which uses mathematical chaos theory along with signal processing to analyze audio, video, and image data. His technology is used whenever someone downloads ring tones and songs to a cell phone. (lhg)

(above) Kevin Short with the CD, The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949, and the medallion he received as a Grammy nominee. (Credit: Douglas Prince, UNH Photo Services)

Kevin as a student at the University of Rochester and as an Academic All-American Baseball Star:

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Woody Guthrie, who won fame for songs such as >This Land is Your Land and many others: