James Frederick Kaiser (Dec. 10, 1929 – Feb. 13, 2020) was an American electrical engineer noted for his contributions in signal processing.

[3][4] Kaiser was born in Piqua, Ohio, and earned his electrical engineering degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1952.

He then moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his masters and doctorate degrees in 1954 and 1959, respectively.

[3] Following his doctorate, he received a three-year appointment as an assistant professor at MIT but decided to take a leave of absence to work at Bell Labs.

Although the arrangement was due to only last for a year, he enjoyed the work so much that he elected to stay.