About Our Name

 
Avery Robert Fisher (1906-1994) was a graduate of New York University (B.S., 1929), an innovator in the field of audio technology, and the founder of Fisher Radio, one of the world’s leading purveyors in the 1950s-1960s of high-quality consumer audio equipment. The transistorized amplifier and the home stereo radio-phonograph combo were the most distinguished of his inventions. As a philanthropist with a lifelong passion for music, he made possible the renovation of New York’s Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center, which in 1976 was re-inaugurated in his honor as the Avery Fisher Hall. He then endowed the Avery Fisher Prize, awarded to this day to musicians of outstanding accomplishment. His generous gift to NYU brought into being Bobst Library’s Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media, which opened in 1986.