Page 12 - \Winter 2015

A Tribute to the Acoustical Society of America
Leo L. Beranek
10 Longwood Drive, Westwood, MA 02090 USA
beranekleo@ieee.org
First, I wish to express my deep appreciation for the fall 2014 issue of Acoustics Today which is dedicated to me and covers my activities throughout my career as an acoustician. I am particularly indebted to Carl Rosenberg and William Cava- naugh who solicited and edited the articles in the issue and to President Judy Dubno and Editor Arthur Popper who ap- proved and put the publication together. In the paragraphs that follow I make some remarks that relate to my activities as a scientist and teacher to the Acoustical Society of America.
My career as an acoustician has spanned a period of 77 years. I first attended a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Iowa City in November 1939. There were only 27 papers at that meeting which meant no parallel ses- sions and thus the opportunity for one to meet every lead- ing acoustician several times. I received my doctorate in 1940. I submitted two papers, based on my thesis, to JASA that they acknowledged having received June 1, 1940. They were published in the July 1940 issue. This rapid publica- tion was most fortunate for me as Professor Philip Morse at MIT expressed great interest in my work and this led to an unusual happening in my career that very October. The newly established U.S. National Defense Research Commit- tee had received a request from the US Air Corps to develop a new light-weight acoustical material for use in reducing noise levels in the cockpits of combat airplanes. Morse rec- ommended me as director of the project which was named the Electro-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University. We also made major improvements in voice communication in high-altitude, unpressurized, combat aircraft and in ground vehicles. These wartime efforts led to the publication, after the war, of my first book, Acoustic Measurements.
I have taken particular interest in the Acoustical Society. As President, in 1954, I saw that the Society needed to change its governance and to better bond its members. The ultimate result was the creation of 13 technical committees, the chairs of which now serve as members of the Technical Council, which is under the general chair of the Vice President of the Society. The technical committees help put together the
10 | Acoustics Today | Winter 2015, volume 11, issue 1
At a special reception, members of the ASA presented
Dr. Beranek with a cake to celebrate his centennial birthday.
technical programs of the Society’s biannual meetings and they bring, via the Technical Council, recommendations for actions by the Executive Council.
I have enjoyed teaching. I was on the physics faculty at Har- vard University before and after WW-II. There, I taught electronics and supervised laboratory experiments. At MIT, as Associate Professor, I taught electrical engineering cours- es and initiated an acoustics course that led to my 1954 book ACOUSTICS. This book largely changed the way acoustics had been taught. The text has been translated into many lan- guages and is still available today. The teachings of that text led to smaller loudspeakers, hastened the adoption of FM broadcasting, and gave the basis for noise control.
I believe that the Acoustical Society should do everything possible to see that acoustics is taught in a significant num- ber of universities. Society members should be encouraged to make contributions to the Acoustical Society Foundation so that students are given travel money to go to meetings and receive supplementary scholarship aid. Government and industry should be urged to support basic research in the various branches of acoustics. Manufacturers are learn-
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