On October 17, 2023, during the 100th Dies Natalis of Radboud University, Mary Beckman received an honorary doctorate from Radboud University. This doctorate was awarded in recognition of her innumerable contributions to the field of linguistics. This edition includes, among other things, honorary promotor Mirjam Ernestus’ laudatio, Mary Beckman’s acceptance speech, and a detailed recollection of Beckman’s professional history.

Mary Beckman made an impact early in her career by launching the Conference on Laboratory Phonology together with John Kingston, which was instrumental in the process of unifying research into the formal system of speech and research into the physical properties of speech. She then went on to co-create the ToBI system for prosody transcription, which allows researchers from many different fields to work and collaborate on speech research. Her academic contributions have fundamentally altered the course of speech research by synthesizing numerous different areas of research that once seemed incompatible.

Honorary promotor Mirjam Ernestus, professor of psycholinguistics: “It is a great honor that someone with these qualities and achievements and who has materialized all the principles that we find important at Radboud University has agreed to become an honorary doctor at our university.”