[3] As a teenager in the decade following World War II, he held part-time and summer jobs at Ampex in Redwood City,[4] working with their first audio tape recorder in 1949.

While at San Jose State College and later at Stanford University (interrupted by two years of Army service),[5] he worked on early prototypes of video tape recorder technologies for Alexander M. Poniatoff and Charlie Ginsburg.

[6] He subsequently won a Marshall Scholarship for a Ph.D (1961) in physics from the University of Cambridge, England, where he was a Research Fellow at Pembroke College and completed his PhD, "Long wavelength X-ray microanalysis"[7] under the supervision of Ellis Cosslett.

[8] As a non degree-holding "consultant",[5] Dolby played a key role in the effort that led Ampex to unveil their prototype Quadruplex videotape recorder in April 1956 which soon entered production.

[14][15] Kevin Yeaman, president and chief executive of Dolby Laboratories, said, "Today we lost a friend, mentor and true visionary.

[17] In December 2017 it was announced that his family had donated a further £85m from his estate to Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory[18] which funded a physics professorship and the building of the Ray Dolby Centre, to be completed in 2024.