Background
Westervelt, Peter Jocelyn was born on December 16, 1919 in Albany, New York, United States. Son of William Irving and Dorothy (Jocelyn) Westervelt.
Westervelt, Peter Jocelyn was born on December 16, 1919 in Albany, New York, United States. Son of William Irving and Dorothy (Jocelyn) Westervelt.
He received his Bachelor of Science in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1947, and his Doctor of Philosophy in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951, at which time he joined the Physics Department at Brown University.
During his long and distinguished career, he held responsible assignments with the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Council, and was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Acoustical Society of America, and the American Astronomical Society. He served as Assistant Attache for, United States. Navy, at the American Embassy in London, United Kingdom, and as a Consultant to Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (now Bolt, Beranek and Newman Technologies Technologies). Westervelt also performed research at the University of Texas at Austin, where he developed new techniques, having widespread application, for the study of sound-by-sound scattering and the laser-excited thermoacoustics.
He became Professor Emeritus at the Brown University Physics Department in 1989, yet still remains active in physics research.
He is especially renowned for his application of the theory of Sir Michael James Lighthill, for his important contributions to the understanding of nonlinear scattering of sound by sound, and for his discoveries of the parametric array and the laser-excited thermoacoustic array. His lifetime of physics research spans other aspects of acoustics as well, include the contributions to the understanding of acoustic radiation pressure, which has applications to Acoustic levitation and other devices which exploit macrosonic phenomena and acoustic streaming, as well as to several other fields of Physics (with example references shown here), including General Relativity, (primarily in the area of gravitational waves), including Gravitational phenomena analogous to the parametric array, Cosmology, low temperature physics the Physics of Sound in Liquid Helium, and High Energy Particle Physics (primarily in the area of cosmic ray particle detectors.
Fellow American Physics Society, Acoustical Society of America.
Married Alice Francis Brown, June 2, 1956. Children: Dirck Edgell, Abby Brown.