Renowned acoustical scientist to receive prestigious IOA Award
Dr Leo Beranek, a renowned acoustical scientist, is to receive the Institute of Acoustics’ Peter Barnett Memorial Award 2010 at this year’s Reproduced Sound conference in Cardiff.
Leo, who became an Honorary Fellow of the IOA in 2004, has been cited for the prestigious award in recognition of his “enormous contribution to the field of electro-acoustics, especially in relation to loudspeakers, intelligibility and signal processing”.
In 1940, he began work on a sound control project for the U. S. National Defense Research Committee, attempting to control vibration and sound in wartime aircraft.
He received his Doctor of Science from Harvard University, also in 1940, and served as Associate Professor of Communications Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1947 until 1985, and Technical Director of its Acoustic Laboratory.
In 1948 he formed acoustic consulting firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman with MIT colleagues Richard Bolt and Robert Newman (now BBN Technologies), to become one of the world’s best known acoustical consulting firms.
By 1953 Bolt, Beranek and Newman had attracted top-flight post-doctorates and obtained research support from government agencies. With such resources at hand, the firm began expanding into new areas of psychoacoustics research, in particular speech compression, criteria for prediction of speech intelligibility in noise and the effects of noise on sleep.
A life-long interest in music led Leo to specialise in concert hall and opera house acoustics. Following trips to more than one hundred of the world’s leading halls and interviews with more than one hundred conductors and music critics, he wrote three books on concert and opera halls.
Recently Leo, who is aged in his 90s, has been acoustical consultant for concert halls, an opera house and drama theatres. He has received many awards including the U.S. President’s National Medal of Science in 2003.
The Institute of Acoustics' Reproduced Sound conference is being held from November 18 - 19 at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. The theme of this popular annual event is "Performing Arts Venues: Balancing the Design".