Leo Beranek

Leo Leroy Beranek (born September 15, 1914) is an American acoustics expert, former MIT professor, and a founder and former president of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (now BBN Technologies). He authored Acoustics, considered the classic textbook in this field, and its updated and extended version published in 2012 under the title Acoustics: Sound Fields and Transducers. He is also an expert in the design and evaluation of concert halls and opera houses, and authored the classic textbook Music, Acoustics, and Architecture, revised and extended in 2004 under the title Concert Halls and Opera Houses: Music, Acoustics, and Architecture.

Early life and education

Beranek was born in 1914 in Solon, Iowa. His father was a farmer whose ancestors came from Bohemia in Czechoslovakia and his mother, previously a schoolteacher, had become a farmwife. Beranek first started school in a one-room schoolhouse in Tipton, Iowa. After his first year, he rode in a horse-drawn school bus on a two-hour trip to a somewhat larger school. In 1922 his family moved back to Solon, where he was soon skipped over third grade and moved directly into fourth grade classes. Around that time, a baby brother was born, named Lyle Edward Beranek.