WESTWOOD, MA — Acoustics pioneer Dr. Leo Leroy Beranek passed away on October 11, nearly one month after celebrating his 102nd birthday. Born Sept 15, 1914 in Solon, Iowa, Beranek has long been considered the industry’s leading expert voice on acoustics.
Beranek graduated from Cornell College in 1936 and moved on to Harvard, receiving his PhD in 1940. During World War II, he ran Harvard’s electro-acoustics laboratory, creating communications system for the military and invented/built the first anechoic chamber.
A former MIT professor and founder of Bolt, Beranek & Newman (now BBN Technologies) Beranek was a monumental force since his first publications in 1939, but it was his 1954 book “Acoustics” that still remains a classic in the field and has been updated over the years, and the current 2012 edition, “Acoustics: Sound Fields & Transducers” is still required reading for anyone seriously interested in the nature of sound.
Beranek’s work inspired numerous other acousticians, including Neville Thiele and Richard Small, in their groundbreaking research in the field of loudspeaker enclosure design, regarding the relationship of loudspeaker parameters to low-frequency performance in vented cabinet enclosures and simple methods of measuring them known today as Thiele-Small parameters.
Beranek expanded the role of BBN beyond acoustics, leading to a major computer software development team, eventually landing a 1968 Defense Department’s Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) contract to create a data communications protocol for connecting 19 computers. BBN’s solution came in the form of the ARPANET, a packet switching network that implemented TCP/IP — two technologies that were key to the foundation of the Internet, proving the concept in 1969 to send the first message between all the computers.
Yet acoustics was Beranek’s first love and he focused on other design/consultation projects and more writing. Among his many consultation projects was the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, considered to be one of the world’s best opera houses. Other Beranek texts — each also a classic in acoustical study — include “Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music Acoustics and Architecture,” “Noise and Vibration,” and “Noise and Vibration Control Engineering.” Beranek also penned his autobiography, entitled “Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Science, and Industry” in 2008.
He received many accolades during his life, including Gold Medals from the Acoustical Society of America and the Audio Engineering Society and the U.S. President’s National Medal of Science, bestowed on him in 2003 by President Bush.
Beranek leaves his wife, Gabriella; sons James K. Beranek, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Thomas B. Haynes, of Chicago; and granddaughter Antonia Hsu Haynes. No word on a memorial service was available at press time.
