Harm K. Schutte

A life-time passion for voice

Harm K. Schutte

It is not an easy task to condense 35 years of working in the field of voice and speech physiology into 30 minutes. It should be mentioned how interest in music, electronics, studying medicine and the presence of a world-famous researcher in the field of voice physiology, prof.dr. Janwillem van den Berg came together. This formed the basis for a career as phoniatrician and voice physiologist. Working on a thesis under his guidance was a great teaching event; the availability of an excellent electronic lab was very helpful for my further research possibilities. Very often researchers from other countries visited van den Berg. So I met several important colleagues. Don Miller even stayed in Groningen and together we built up a line of research on several aspects on singing. This all next to doing interesting clinical work with voice, speech, language, nasality, transsexuals, all other patients with communication disorders. Clinical work and research was done: on the rehabilitation and the substitute voice of laryngectomees, the Groningen Button; on thyroplastic surgery which was started in the Netherlands by Isshiki in Groningen; indications for early pharyngoplasty in cleft palate patients and so on. See for a more extensive description the website of the Groningen Voice Research Lab.

I will not discuss this work in detail, but present aspects and backgrounds needed for a career in voice physiology and clinical care of voice and speech patients.