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Physics Department from 1968-1974. Dr. Beyer was an inspira- tion to generations of Brown students, where he taught every- thing from freshman physics to advanced graduate courses. Stories abound about his using his foot as a blackboard pointer, riding a tricycle down an incline plane into class, or starting his lecture in a helium-fueled chipmunk voice. “Don’t just stand there, write your thesis!” he would sometimes quip to struggling graduate students. But he also treated those same students with great humanity. “He was very much a father figure to me,” says former graduate student Murray Korman, now a physics profes- sor at the U.S. Naval Academy. “He gave me the same compas- sion and time as he would his great graduate students, who had much more talent than I ever had.”
Dr. Beyer was deeply proud of his long association with the Acoustical Society of America. President of the Society from 1968-1969, he later served more than 20 years as treasurer. He claimed that during his tenure he was able to generate a higher rate of return on the Society’s investments than his counterpart at the American Economic Association. He was awarded the Society’s Gold Medal in 1984. (He received an honorary degree from Hofstra the same year.) His daughter Margaret recalls that people flocked around him when she accompanied him to the Society’s 75th anniversary meeting in 2004. “The old man’s still got it,” he quipped to her. Beyer also served as chairman of the International Congress on Acoustics from 1978 to 1984.
In 1948 he started what his friend and colleague at Brown, Arthur Williams, called “a parallel career,” translating scientific texts into English. He began with German, translating two books, including the seminal “Quantum Mechanics” by the famed physicist John von Neumann. “Possibly feeling that German was too easy,” said Williams, “he studied Russian.” In 1956 he started a pilot program to translate Russian physics journals into English. It turned into a major initiative of the American Institute of Physics that he was involved with for fifty years. His children recall that he never went anywhere without a sheaf of Russian translation papers under his arm, or on the seat of the car, so that he could work on them any time he had a few moments to spare. He also managed to learn a little Chinese, and spent two years as editor of the English translation of the Chinese Journal of Physics.
It wasn’t until more than 45 years later that he revealed the flip side of his translation work. The CIA took notice of his con- nections with Russian scientists, and recruited him to help keep an eye on them. From 1956 to 1962 he did just that, reporting to a CIA officer named Harold Burris-Meyer, a fellow acoustician who was deeply involved in military deception efforts during World War II. Professor Beyer was given a code name: Louis Walchirk, and the CIA financed at least one of his trips to Russia. “It was the height of the Cold War,” he said in 2005. “I thought that anything you were doing to combat the influences of the Soviet system was high patriotism.”
Beyer wrote or translated more than a dozen books, and more than 75 scientific papers. His last book, Sounds of Our Times, published in 1999, was a history of acoustics for the last 200 years. One reviewer wrote: “To produce a coherent and enlightened summary of two centuries of work in any science requires a very special person: One who not only understands it all, but who has taught it all, and has personally contributed to
its development over many years... such a person is Robert T. Beyer.” He also served at various times as consultant for Raytheon, Exxon, and the United States Navy.
A scientist by trade, he had an endless appetite for literature and history, and an intellectual curiosity that knew no bounds. “He’s the only person I know who read Dr. Zhivago in Russian and Remembrance of Things Past in French,” says his daughter Catherine. He could discuss with equal enthusiasm every battle of the Civil War, the poetry of A.E. Housman or the true inven- tor of the telephone. (No, it wasn’t Alexander Graham Bell!) In recent years he lectured extensively on Russian history, the American presidency, and the Civil War to fellow residents at the Laurelmead retirement community. He devoured the novels of Dick Francis, was a devotee of Sherlock Holmes, and, much to the great dismay of his son, a lifelong New York Yankees fan. His supply of historical anecdotes was endless. At times he seemed a walking encyclopedia, and in fact he helped write the 1960’s edition of the World Book Encyclopedia, contributing the article on sound.
His memory was astonishing. He seemed able to recall every book ever read, every city he ever visited and every person he ever met. He could quote Plato, Shakespeare, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a dozen others with ease. He could tell you the name of all his classmates in kindergarten (not to men- tion where they sat) and every hotel the family stayed in on a trip to California in 1953.
Dr. Beyer loved travel. One of the perks of college life was the opportunity to take several yearlong sabbatical leaves. The Beyer’s spent sabbaticals in Los Angeles, CA; Stuttgart, Germany; Birmingham, England; Austin, TX; and State College, PA. Dr. Beyer traveled extensively to scientific meetings around the world. Nothing gave him more pleasure than spending a few hours on foot exploring a new city.
A man of deep religious faith, he was a lector for many years at St. Martha’s parish in East Providence, and later at St. Sebastian’s in Providence. Despite his many activities, he never lacked time for his family. When he wasn’t traveling, he was rarely home for dinner later than 5 PM. He made a habit of washing the kitchen floor so his wife wouldn’t have to, and always took enormous pride in the accomplishments of his chil- dren and grandchildren. When he perceived the need, he wrote long and literate letters to each of his children, dispensing advice and affection always flavored with a dash of wit.
He, in turn, was deeply beloved by his children and grand children, who regarded his life as a never-ending source of amazements. Not long ago, his daughter Cathy unearthed a let- ter he wrote in 1964 describing a visit to all-black Tougaloo col- lege in Mississippi. At a time when Mississippi was aflame with racial tension, and civil rights workers were being murdered, Dr. Beyer took it upon himself to visit Tougaloo to lecture and lend his support. In Jackson, Mississippi, he met with local civil rights leaders who kept their baby in a bulletproof cradle because of the threat of snipers. “One had the impression of an isolated fortress, but one without guns or material weapons,” he wrote. “The courage of all these people is fantastic.” He later considered becoming an administrator at Tugaloo, but declined because of fears about his own family’s safety. To his youngest daughter, Mary, the story of the Tougaloo trip simply deepened the sense
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