Karlhienz Brandenburg, born on June 20, 1954(69 years) is known as "The father of the MP3". You can probably tell by the name that he is a German electrician and mathematician. He is also known for his work in the field of audio coding, perception measurement, wave field synthesis and psychoacoustics. In 1989, he got his phD from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Electrical engineering for his work on digital audio coding and ‘perceptual measurement techniques’. Is part in the creation of the MP3 actually started as a challenge. In 1982, his PhD thesis advisor wanted to patent a process of transferring data (that at the time, is considered impossible), so he asked Brandenburg for help. The “moving picture experts group” or MPEG wasn’t able to make too much progress until 1986. It picked due to advancements in technology. “We had better computers, better probabilities to experiment with music on the computers — in fact it was in early '86 that at some I point I had the idea to do things in a different way from others in the field had done and, in fact, that idea went into the first patent in 1986, and still can be found in MP3 and ISDN.”