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Passings
in 1984, and the Freudenthal Medal, in 1996. The ASME awarded Crandall the Worcester Reed Warner Medal in 1971; the Timoshenko Medal in 1990; the Den Hartog Award in 1991; and the Thomas K. Caughey Dynamics Award in 2009. He was inducted as an honorary ASME member in 1988.
In addition to his eminent research activities, Crandall was a strong proponent of international collegiality. Both Crandall and his wife, Pat, had strong interest in the teaching and sup- porting of foreign students. This interest was partly initiated by their first sabbatical at Imperial College London in 1949 and reinforced by subsequent sabbaticals and lecture tours in Mexico, France, Germany, Israel, Russia, China, Japan, Aus-
tralia, and South Korea. Crandall learned to speak Spanish, French, and Russian, and enjoyed giving lectures in the local language. Pat chaired MIT’s faculty wives committee, which organized English-language classes for the wives of foreign students. She also enjoyed playing Dixieland piano and was a member of the Tabor Hill Jazz Band for several decades, hosting their rehearsals at their home on Tabor Hill Road in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Crandall's wife Pat, his close companion for 62 years, died in 2011. He is survived by his daughter, Jane (Crandall) Kontri- mas, her husband Peter, and son Stephen; and by his son, William B. Crandall. – Allan D. Pierce
a coauthor with Cummings of a paper “Underwater sounds of migrating gray whales, Eschrichtius Glaucus (Cope),” pub- lished in JASA in 1968.
A special session in Cummings honor was part of the 140th ASA meeting in Newport Beach, CA on 3-8 December, 2000. Throughout his 50 years of active membership in the ASA, Bill strived to provide a more accommodating environ- ment for young professionals within the organization, while serving as a mentor to young colleagues and graduate stu- dents.
Dr. Cummings received his B. S. in biology and chemistry from Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, in 1954. He served
in the U.S. Army from 1954-1956 and then went on to his graduate studies at the University of Miami, Florida, where he earned his M.S. in 1958 and his Ph. D in 1967. As a dedicated biological oceanographer and bioacoustician, Bill conducted research on marine invertebrates, fishes, and mam- mals throughout ocean basins around the globe. During his graduate work at the University of Miami, Bill studied the reproductive biology of fishes and shrimp along the Western Atlantic and Caribbean. He also investigated near-shore and salt pond ecology while at the University of Rhode Island before initiating work on ambient noise and acoustic propa- gation across Florida Strait. Bill then teamed up with John Steinberg, among others, to install and operate a hydrophone array off the Bahamas where he operated an innovative acoustic-video station from 1959-1965. While working on the long-term monitoring project in Bimini, Bill met Robert Gales (a former ASA President). Gales invited Bill to give
a lecture on his work at the Naval Undersea Center in San
William C. Cummings
1932-2013
and Cummings served as the Group’s founding chair from 1988 to 1994. He was also a former vice president and presi- dent of the San Diego ASA Regional Chapter He served on the ASA coordinating committee on environmental acoustics (an ad hoc committee) and organized various special sessions at ASA meetings, especially during the formative years of the Technical Specialty Group. Cummings is widely-recognized in the animal bioacoustics community for his work concerned with the sounds of whales. He frequently presented papers at ASA meetings, including papers in honorary sessions to com- memorate former colleagues D. V. Holliday, Robert Gales, and P. O. Thompson. Cummings coauthored several papers with both Holliday and Thompson. For example, Holliday was a coauthor with Cummings on a paper, “Passive acoustic location of bowhead whales in a population census off Point Barrow, Alaska,” published in JASA in 1985. Thompson was
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William C. Cummings, a Fellow of the Acoustical Soci- ety of America, passed away on August 20, 2013 at the age of 81. Dr. Cummings was a principal participant in the actions that led to the forma- tion of the ASA’s Animal Bioacoustics Technical Com- mittee in 1997. This Techni- cal Committee began as a Technical Specialty Group,