Page 38 - October 2010

Preston Wood Smith, Jr. of North Weymouth, Massachusetts, formerly resi- dent in Cambridge, died in Weymouth at age 86. He was, for many years, a research scientist and consultant specializing in acoustics and vibrations.
Preston was born in Boston in 1923 and
educated locally, graduating from The Rivers
School (then in Brookline) in 1939 and from
Harvard College in 1942 (class of 1943).
During the Second World War he served in
the Pacific theater of operations as an officer
in the Field Artillery, leaving active duty with
the grade of Captain. He received the Ph.D.
degree from Harvard University in 1952 and
then engaged in post-graduate studies at the
Harvard Acoustics Research Laboratory for three years.
In 1955, Dr. Smith co-founded the research and consult- ing partnership Cambridge Acoustical Associates, leaving it in 1959 to join Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. (BBN) where he spent the remainder of his professional career. At BBN, he was a Principal Scientist and played a central role in the development of their research divisions for physical sciences and underwater technology.
After retirement in 1995, he was an occasional consultant to BBN, but became increasingly involved in genealogy and the development of his family history. Throughout his life, he was an avid small- boat sailor in and around Hingham Bay and Boston harbor.
Preston’s professional career had been largely devoted to the analysis and mathe- matical modeling of sound transmission in the ocean, structural vibration in complex structures, and sound radiation and scat- tering. He is widely known for his research in these fields, most of which was spon- sored by the U.S. Navy, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force. He is the author of numerous
papers published in the professional literature.
Dr. Smith was a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of
America, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and a member of the scientific research society Sigma Xi. In 1996 he was awarded the Trent-Crede Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America for his pio- neering contributions to the fields of vibration and structur- al-acoustic interactions.
Passings
Dick Stern
Applied Research Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University PO Box 30, State College, Pennsylvania 16804
Preston Wood Smith, Jr.
1923–2010
ASA has been notified of the passing of the following ASA member: Robert Galambos
Acoustics Today accepts contributions for “Passings.” Submissions of about 250 words that may be edited in MSWord or plain text files should be e-mailed to AcousticsToday@aip.org. Photographs may be informal, but must be at least 300 dpi. Please send the text and photographs in separate files.
Passings 37