DR. MELVILLE CLARK Jr.

I remember working at his Wayland house doing circuit design . He was a great man that always focused on his work. Always gave good advice. At one point.. I mentioned I had a date on Friday night. He responded .."If you are dedicated to your work women are a distraction..He may have been right !...

I visited Dr. Clark twice, once in the mid-60s and once in the early 70s. He strongly encouraged my work in music signal processing. I was amazed with the electronic apparatus he set up musical sound analysis, together with David Luce, in his house in Cochituate (Wayland), Massachusetts. His synthesizer was in beta form when I saw it about 1973. I was disappointed that it was never put on the market. I saw him one more time in 1994 when he gave a talk on his methods at the Cambridge meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. He gave a fine talk, and it was a lot of fun visiting with him. After that, nearly every Christmas I would receive from him a Christmas card and a two page form letter expounding on some aspect of his life philosophy. They were always interesting, although quite eccentric. On each card there was a handwritten note simply saying "What are you doing now?". The last one I received was in 2008.
He lived for his projects. He lived alone, but he seemed happy working towards his various goals. I will miss him.

I have just found out that Mell passed away. He was my graduate thesis advisor. We exchanged holiday greetings for many years. There were few professors I liked as well as Mell. He was always encouraging and available to me as I worked on my dissertation. I will miss him.

Maurice Robkin, Ph.D. (Nuc.E.), 1961

Dr Clark provided a never surpassed example of kind patience and encouragement in mentoring my BS thesis in musical acoustics in 1960-61. With that start, I had little difficulty in making presentations throughout my technical career

Mel Clark - intelligent, full of interesting stories, kind, caring, compassionate, funny wit. Too many memories of you...holidays, math tutoring, our business conversations, you and Plato to name a few. It was wonderful to know you and you will always be remembered by my family and me. Carol Raymond

Dr. Clark will be missed.