Edwin Carstensen’s contributions to early research at the Navy’s Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory

Abstract

Edwin Carstensen enrolled at the Case School of Applied Science to study acoustics under Dayton Miller but upon Miller’s passing in 1941, he took up study under Robert Shankland. The influence of World War II reached deeply into academia in those years and Carstensen’s advisor Shankland became the Director of Underwater Acoustic Metrology at Columbia University—Division of War Research (DWR). Thus Carstensen was first introduced to practical problems in underwater acoustics of critical importance to the Navy as a graduate student and employee (of DWR). At that time, the Underwater Acoustic Metrology center was headquartered in New York City at the Empire State building but established a remote calibration and research facility near Orlando, Florida, which subsequently became the Navy’s Underwater Sound Research Laboratory (USRL). Carstensen began his life-long study of propagation of sound in bubbly media and the effects of cavitation. He also worked on diffraction and calibration of hydrophones by self-reciprocity, the subject of his Master’s thesis that was delayed until 1947 due to his war-effort service. This paper summarizes some of his early work, publications and collaborations in the Underwater Acoustics.