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of modulation masking, work that led to the development of models of modulation processing based on modulation filter banks.
Sid moved to Arizona State University as an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science and was promoted to Full Professor in 1992. During his 21 years at ASU, he served as an effective mentor for 11 master’s students, 6 doctoral students and 13 postdoctoral fellows, many of whom contributed to his ongoing research program focused on temporal processing in normal and impaired auditory systems, the role of compression in auditory pro- cessing and electric-acoustic hearing. He contributed to the university as Department Chair, Dean of Natural Sciences and Associate Vice President for the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development. He also contributed to professional organizations as an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and Editor for Hearing of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
Sid was diagnosed with cancer in January 2012. Sid faced his final illness with grace, dignity, and style. During the 19
months that he fought the cancer, he kept an online journal (see <http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/sidbacon>) with more than 500 daily entries describing his feelings, his activ- ities and his devotion to his family as well as all of the med- ical ups and downs he faced. His direct approach to the prob- lems and consistent upbeat attitude serve as a model and inspiration for all of us.
Sid P. Bacon made important contributions at a number of levels. He made significant contributions to our under- standing of temporal processing, compression and speech perception in listeners with normal hearing, hearing loss and cochlear implants. He was an effective teacher and mentor and a great colleague. His untimely death is a great loss to the field of auditory research.
Walt Jesteadt
Neal F. Viemeister Brian C. J. Moore
D. Wesley Grantham William A. Yost
Amar Bose
1929–2013
Amar Bose, an Honorary Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, died on June 12, 2013. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 2, 1929, to an American mother and a father from India. Dr. Bose helped sup- port his family during World War II while in high school by repairing radios. What follows below is extracted from the encomium published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (April 2011) and authored by Thomas Miller, Charles Hieken, Thomas A. Froeschle, and William M. Rabinowitz.
Amar Bose entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1947 and was admitted to the co-oper- ative course in electrical engineering, working for Philco Corporation in Philadelphia in engineering and color televi- sion research. He received the S.B.E.E. and S.M.E.E. degrees in 1952 and an Sc.D. degree in 1956. He was awarded an MIT Fellowship to work at NV Philips Electronics in Eindhoven, Netherlands, in the summer of 1953.
In 1956, when Dr. Bose was writing his doctoral thesis he purchased a hi-fi system based on specifications. The poor sound quality, despite the superior specifications, gave rise to his curiosity and subsequent research into speaker design. The same year, he made his first patented invention, while working nights at the MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE), of a spherical loudspeaker system consisting of 22 closely spaced small drivers electronically equalized on an eighth of a spherical surface. When Dr. Jerome Wiesner, then RLE Director and later MIT President, saw the experimental loud- speaker, he offered RLE support for research in electroacoustics that Dr. Bose conducted for over a decade.
The research centered around efforts to reproduce music that would be closer to the sound of live music. To that end
he learned that spatial properties were important considera- tions. Most sound of live music reaches listeners after reflec- tions from the surfaces of the listening environment. The research led to the invention of the Bose 901 Direct/Reflecting loudspeaker system.
One day Dr. Bose was listening to music reproduced by a nearby audio power amplifier and noticed the heat emanat- ing from it. That inspired him to recognize that a much more efficient amplifier could be designed to dissipate less heat by using transistors in a switching mode. In 1964 he founded Bose Corporation as a private company to conduct research and to manufacture superior products based on that research. The first research contract was based on the two state switching technology for audio amplifiers.
Dr. Bose continued as a member of the MIT faculty, teaching courses in electrical engineering and acoustics. Later he shifted to teaching mainly acoustics and continued for more than 30 years. His commitment to excellence in teaching resulted in the establishment of the Amar Bose Teaching Award at MIT.
Research conducted at Bose Corporation has led to a number of innovative products. In addition to the 901 loud- speaker system, other products include the Acoustic Wave music system, the Wave radio, Lifestyle home theater sys- tems, custom automotive sound systems (installed in mil- lions of automobiles), noise reducing headphones, active auto- motive suspensions, Bose Ride truck seat suspensions, and the VideoWave entertainment system.
The automotive sound systems represent years of inno- vative designs incorporating the spatial characteristics of the vehicles through electronic equalization, establishing new
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