Leo Leroy Beranek

Scientist. He was born on Sept 15, 1914 in Solon, Iowa to Edward Fred Beranek and Beatrice Stahle, passed away on Oct 10, 2016 at 102. A distinguished acoustic engineer, Leo attended Cornell College and then Harvard University in 1940, where he received his doctorate. During his tenure at Harvard, he was responsible for working on communication and noise reduction systems for military aircraft during WWII. He is also credited for building the first anechoic chamber. In 1941, Leo married his first wife Phyllis Knight, in Cambridge, MA. Phyllis was a dental hygienist whom Leo met while he was getting his teeth fixed. In 1945, he worked for Hush-A-Phone which marketed an improved version of a cup that fit over the mouth piece of a telephone to prevent the speaker from being overheard. This innovation later caused a lawsuit, Hush-A-Phone v. United States, resulting in a win for the company, and affectively ending AT&T's monopoly on American telephones/telephone services, as they had been threatening to terminate users telephone services for using the Hush-A-Phone. From 1947 to 1958, he was a Professor of Communications Engineering at MIT. He also helped found BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman) in 1948 and served as the president from 1952-1969. BBN's portfolio of groundbreaking projects include the likes of the Tanglewood's Koussevitzky Music Shed, New National Theater Opera House, Philharmonic Hall, Papal Mass in Yankee stadium. BNN also was noted for assisting in the investigation of the Watergate Tapes. In 1969, he became the President of Boston Broadcasters, Inc. which controlled WCVB and Channel 5. In 1982 his wife Phyllis passed away. Leo and Phyllis were close to another couple Daniel and Gabriella Sohn, whose marriage ended up in a divorce. Leo found this out years later and looked her up and "that's how it ended up in a marriage." In 1983 to 1986, Leo was Chairman of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and also served on the Council for the Arts at MIT. Beranek wrote numerous textbooks that are considered staples within his field, such as Acoustics, Music, Acoustics, and Architecture, and his autobiography and Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Science, and Industry. Leo also authored numerous papers dedicated to advancing research on Concert hall acoustics. His work within the Acoustics Engineering field earned him many awards and honors, most notably the National Medal of Science (2002), ASA Gold Medal (1975), and Wallace Clement Sabine Medal (1961). In 2016 Beranek and his wife established the Leo and Gabriella Beranek Scholarship in Architecture Acoustics and Noise Control.