John Backus (acoustician), Date of Birth, Date of Death

    

John Backus (acoustician)

acoustician

Date of Birth: 29-Apr-1911

Date of Death: 28-Oct-1988

Profession: physicist, nuclear physicist

Zodiac Sign: Taurus


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About John Backus (acoustician)

  • John Graham Backus (April 29, 1911 – October 28, 1988) was an American physicist and acoustician. John Backus was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, where he studied at Reed College, receiving a BA in 1932.
  • He went on to graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he did research in nuclear physics at the Radiation Laboratory under Ernest Lawrence.
  • He received an MA in 1936, and a PhD in 1940.
  • In 1945 he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Southern California, a post he retained until his retirement in 1980.
  • During the early part of his career, his research focussed on gaseous discharges in strong magnetic fields.
  • He was also a musician, trained as a performer on piano, bassoon, clarinet and other woodwinds and received the degree of MMus in conducting from the University of Southern California in 1959.
  • In his later career he turned increasingly to the study of musical acoustics, particularly those of wind instruments and organ pipes.
  • In 1969 he published The Acoustical Foundations of Music, a book which became a standard text for introductory courses in musical acoustics.
  • A second edition appeared in 1977.
  • He received the Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America in 1986.
  • Backus died in Los Angeles in 1988. John Backus was a Renaissance man who in addition to music and physics was a highly skilled mountaineer.
  • The Sierra Club's Hundred Peaks Section List contains approximately 275 summits, and John was the first person to ascend every mountain on the list six times.
  • He was also the first person to lead every peak on the list, among his many hiking and climbing accomplishments.

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