(From back flap of "A Practicaln Introduction to Phonetics"):
J.C. Catford is widely regarded as the leading practical phonetician of our time, and is currently (1988) Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Michigan. He has wide and varied teaching experience, having worked for several years for the British Council in Greece, Egypt, and Palestine, and subsequently in the Universities of Edinburgh and Michigan. Through extensive travel, he has developed a special knowledge of exotic languages. He is author of numerous influential articles in phonetics, and of "A Linguistic Theory of Translation" (1965) and "Fundamental Problems in Phonetics" (1977)