Peter Westervelt

During his long and distinguished career, he held responsible assignments with the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Council, and was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Acoustical Society of America, and the American Astronomical Society. He served as Assistant Attache for Research, U.S. Navy, at the American Embassy in London, U.K., and as a Consultant to Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (now BBN Technologies). Westervelt also performed research at the University of Texas at Austin, where he developed new techniques, having widespread application, for the study of sound-by-sound scattering and the laser-excited thermoacoustics. Westervelt was awarded the Lord Rayleigh Medal in 1985, by the British Institute for Acoustics. He became Professor Emeritus at the Brown University Physics Department in 1989.

Peter Westervelt was awarded the Rayleigh Medal by the British Institute of Acoustics in 1985. He also received the Silver Medal in Physical Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America for his discovery and explanation of the Parametric Array in 2008.

He received his BS in Physics from MIT in 1947, and his PhD in Physics from MIT in 1951, at which time he joined the Physics Department at Brown University.

Westervelt began his career in 1940-41 at the MIT Radiation Laboratory and the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory, where he worked with researchers including Frederick Vinton Hunt, Leo Beranek (National Medal of Science winner) and Phillip Morse during the Second World War.

Peter Westervelt (December 16, 1919 – January 24, 2015) was an American physicist, noted for his work in nonlinear acoustics, and Professor Emeritus of Physics at Brown University.