Peter Westervelt

WESTERVELT, PETER JOCELYN died peacefully at home in Warwick, on January 24th, at age 95. He was the son of Gen. William I. Westervelt and Dorothy J. Westervelt. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Alice Brown Westervelt; two children, Dirck Westervelt of Middlebury, CT and Abby Westervelt and her husband Hayden Pelliccia of Ithaca, NY; three grandchildren, Eli Gardella-Westervelt and Emily and Camilla Pelliccia; and his sister Jane Westervelt of Shelburne, VT. Peter was born in Albany, NY on December 16, 1919. While attending MIT, where he received his B.S. and Ph.D., he worked, during the war, at the MIT Radiation Laboratory and the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory. In 1951, he began his career in the Physics Department at Brown University, taking leave shortly after to serve as Assistant Attaché for Research, U.S. Navy, at the American Embassy in London and later to conduct research at the University of Texas, Austin. During his career, he held 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 is known best for his important contributions to nonlinear acoustics, including his discovery and explanation of the principles of the parametric array. For these contributions, he was awarded the Lord Rayleigh Medal from the British Institute for Acoustics and the Silver Medal in Physical Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America. Services will be private. Donations in his name may be made to Rhode Island Public Radio, 1 Union Station, Providence, RI, 02903 or online at RIPR.org.