Abstract:
In earlier and in those years the physics department at Brown University was mostly acoustics: Profs. B. Lindsay, A. O. Williams, R. Beyer, P. Westervelt, W. Nyborg, R. Morse, and others were all major acousticians in those days, in fact, I converted from low-energy physics to acoustics under their guidance. The news of conversion was drowned, however, by the noise that Sputnik generated in 1957. While the physics and engineering departments were engaged in noise control activities in the populace at large, Prof. Beyer characteristically turned his energies to upgrading high schools' proficiency in physics. In a few months, a ``summer teaching for the teachers'' was organized at Brown University and a dozen years later we did get to the moon.