Page 69 - Spring2022

Ask an Acoustician: Arthur N. Popper
Arthur N. Popper and Micheal L. Dent
Figure 1. Art Popper with his grandkids (left to right) Emma, Sophie, and Ethan.
Meet Arthur N. Popper
In this, the last “Ask an Acoustician” essay, we feature Arthur N. (Art) Popper. I thought it was fitting that Art, as editor of Acoustics Today (AT), write the final article in this series of interviews. Art received his BA from New York University, The Bronx, New York, and his PhD from the City University of New York. He had faculty positions at
the University of Hawai’i, Honolulu, and Georgetown Uni- versity, Washington, DC, before moving to the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1987 (where I got to know him when I was a graduate student). Art is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and has served on many committees of the ASA over the years. Currently, in addition to serving as the AT editor, he is the coordinat- ing editor for animal bioacoustics for The Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America. I will let Art tell us the rest.
A Conversation with Arthur N. Popper, in His Own Words
Tell us about your work.
I am “semiretired” in that I no longer have a regular appoint- ment at the University of Maryland where I worked for over 25 years. But I continue to be very active professionally, doing research, writing, editing, and a bit of consulting. Perhaps the thing I enjoy most is editing AT. Indeed, AT takes up a good deal of my time since I not only work with authors to develop topics but also review and edit all articles and essays.
Of the time I spend on AT, the most time consuming and interesting is working with the authors to hone their contributions. By this, I mean that our goal for AT is to have scholarly content while communicating science and technology in ways that every member of the ASA can read and understand. The “problem” is that most of us are trained to write for peers and at very technical levels, and so communicating complex material to a broad audience is a challenge. Fortunately, most authors are responsive to my
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https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2022.18.1.69
“pushing” them to communicate with our very broad ASA audience, but this may take anywhere from 3 to 12 iterations of a manuscript. I am pleased, however, that authors not only thank me for working with them but also often tell me that they learned a good deal about how to communicate their work to a broader audience, which might include a dean, a CEO, the public, or their grandparents.
I also continue editing a series of books, the Springer Hand- book of Auditory Research (volume 74 is in press) (Fay and Popper, 2014), I have also been writing several scholarly papers each year, mostly related to my interests in the effects of anthro- pogenicsoundonfishesandotheraquaticlife(e.g.,Popperand Hawkins, 2019), and I am part of several research projects on the potential effects of anthropogenic sound on fishes.
Describe your career path.
My path is one of serendipity, which I discussed in Popper (2014). Opportunities arose and I followed their trail. Indeed, I keep being amazed that if I’d made a different decision at various points, my career might be very different.
Just as a few examples, I got started doing research on fish because, on my way to school one day (New York University), I had a few minutes to spare before my bus would come and so I stepped into a new pet shop. I found a tank holding fish without eyes, Mexican blind cave fish. I got very curious about these fish and asked one of my professors, Douglas Webster (who later became a good friend), about them. He invited me to do research on hearing in his laboratory.
This led to my working in the world-renowned Ichthyology
Volume 18, issue 1 | Spring 2022 • Acoustics Today 69