Andrzej Rakowski, 1931–2018

Abstract

Our community has lost a truly exceptional man and scholar who combined the scientific worlds of acoustics, psychology, and music in a unique way during his career that spanned over half a century. Andrzej Rakowski, Emeritus Professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music passed away on April 3, 2018 in Warsaw, Poland, at the age of 87. He was an internationally acclaimed authority on musical acoustics and psychoacoustics and a major figure in auditory perception research. He was born in Warsaw on June 16, 1931. After graduating in electronic engineering (Warsaw University of Technology, M. Sc. in 1957) and music theory (State Higher School of Music in Warsaw, M. A. in 1958), he went to Great Britain on a British Council Scholarship (1958/59) and worked at Durham University, King's College, Newcastle upon Tyne with one of the most renowned specialists on acoustics of musical instruments, Professor E. G. Richardson. Later, after defending his doctoral dissertation (Warsaw University of Technology, D. Sc. in 1963, thesis: “Initial transients in sounds of wind instruments”) he was nominated to the position of Assistant Professor at the newly opened Department of Sound Engineering in Warsaw Higher School of Music (since 2008, Fryderyk Chopin Music University). His research interest turned in the direction of music psychoacoustics and he focused on the issues concerning the perception of pitch. He received a second doctoral degree ( habilitation ) in art sciences (musicology) from the University of Warsaw in 1977 (thesis: “Categorical perception of pitch in music”) and became an associate professor (1982) and then a full-professor (1989), as conferred by the President …