Founder and Chairman of Dolby Laboratories, Inc, was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1933. From 1949-52 he worked on various audio and instrumentation projects at Ampex Corporation, where from 1952-57 he was mainly responsible for the development of the electronic aspects of the Ampex video tape recording system. In 1957 he received a B.S. degree from Stanford University, and upon being awarded a Marshall Scholarship and a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship, left Ampex for further study at Cambridge University in England. He received a Ph.D. degree in physics from Cambridge in 1961, and was elected a Fellow of Pembroke College (Honorary Fellow, 1983). During his last year at Cambridge, he was also a consultant to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.

In 1963, Dolby took up a two-year appointment as a United Nations advisor in India, then returned to England in 1965 to establish Dolby Laboratories in London. In 1976 he moved to San Francisco, where his company established further offices, laboratories, and manufacturing facilities. He holds more than 50 U.S. patents, and has written papers on video tape recording, long wavelength X-ray analysis, and noise reduction.

Dolby is a fellow and past president of the Audio Engineering Society, and a recipient of its Silver and Gold Medal Awards. He is also a fellow of the British Kinematograph, Sound, and Television Society and an Honorary Member of The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, which in the past has also awarded him its Samuel L. Warner Memorial Award, Alexander M. Poniatoff Gold Medal, and Progress Medal. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted him a Scientific and Engineering Award in 1979 and an Oscar in 1989, when he was also presented an Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. In 1986, Dolby was made an honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE).

In 1997, Dolby received the U.S. National Medal of Technology, the IEEE's Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award, and the American Electronic Association's Medal of Achievement. That year he also received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Cambridge University, and in 1999 was awarded an honorary Doctor of the University degree by the University of York.

Dolby makes his home in San Francisco with his wife Dagmar, and enjoys skiing, sailing, and flying airplanes and helicopters.