The naval science of Albert Beaumont Wood, O.B.E., D.Sc

Abstract

A. B. Wood’s career in Naval scientific research spanned a period of nearly 50 years, from the early days of the first World War to the time of his death in 1964. After graduating from Manchester University with a first class honors degree in Physics he seemed destined for a career of distinction in academia. But, like many young men at the time, when the U.K. was becoming deeply embroiled in war, he felt dissatisfied with the cloistered academic life and instead became one of the first two physicists to receive an official appointment with the Admiralty under the newly formed “Board of Invention and Research”. Thus, the Royal Navy Scientific Service was born and Dr. Wood began his celebrated research into the propagation of sound underwater, about which little was known at the time. Many of his technical achievements were made at the Admiralty Research Laboratory, Teddington and, shortly before his death, he spent a year at the U.S. Naval Electronics Laboratory, as it was then called, in San Diego. He was awarded the Pioneer of Underwater Acoustics medal by the Acoustical Society of America and his Text Book of Sound is still a standard work on the subject.