John Backus
Lithuanian American physicist and acoustician
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(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, John Graham Backus was a Lithuanian 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 's Published Works
Published Works
- The Acoustical Foundations of Music (1970) (210)
- Small‐Vibration Theory of the Clarinet (1963) (101)
- Input impedance curves for the brass instruments (1976) (55)
- Input impedance curves for the reed woodwind instruments (1974) (54)
- The effect of the player's vocal tract on woodwind instrument tone. (1985) (50)
- Harmonic Generation in the Trumpet (1971) (48)
- Vibrations of the Reed and the Air Column in the Clarinet (1961) (47)
- Studies of Cold Cathode Discharges in Magnetic Fields (1959) (29)
- Effect of Wall Material on the Steady‐State Tone Quality of Woodwind Instruments (1964) (24)
- Multiphonic tones in the woodwind instruments (1977) (24)
- Wall Vibrations in Organ Pipes and Their Effect on Tone (1965) (20)
- The Beta-Ray Spectra of Cu64 at Low Energies (1945) (16)
- Acoustic impedance of an annular capillary (1975) (15)
- Ion Energies in a Cold Cathode Discharge in a Magnetic Field (1960) (12)
- Die Reihe-A Scientific Evaluation (1962) (9)
- Resonance Frequencies of the Clarinet (1968) (6)
- Input impedance curves for the brass instruments and the behavior of mutes (1975) (4)
- Erratum: ’’Small‐vibration theory of the clarinet’’ [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 35, 305–313 (1963)] and a discussion of air‐column parameters. (1977) (4)
- The design of cyclotron oscillators. (1951) (4)
- The Acoustical Foundations of Music@@@The Technology of Computer Music (1969) (3)
- The clarinet reed and its relation to the clarinet mouthpiece (1978) (2)
- Anomalous behavior of a clarinetlike system (1981) (2)
- Practical Comptrollership Course (1987) (2)
- Resonances in the Bassoon (1967) (1)
- Interaction of the Clarinet Reed with an Air Column Having a Single Resonance (1972) (1)
- Acoustical Investigations of the Clarinet (1963) (1)
- Re: Pseudo-Science in Music (1960) (1)
- Frequency Shift for Loud Tones of the Clarinet (1963) (1)
- Clarinet‐Reed Parameters (1966) (1)
- Effect of Steady Air Flow on the Resonance Frequencies and Q's of the Clarinet (1964) (1)
- Variation with Loudness of the Harmonic Structure of Clarinet and Bassoon Tones (1962) (1)
- Effect of the player's vocal tract on the tone quality of reed woodwind instruments (1983) (1)
- Effect of Wall Material on Organ‐Pipe Tone—An Evaluation of Some Earlier Experiments (1964) (0)
- Physical Basis of Musical Sounds, by Joseph Morgan (1981) (0)
- On the use of high‐modulus graphite‐epoxy materials for synthetic clarinet reeds (1980) (0)
- Behavior and Properties of Clarinet Reeds (1961) (0)
- Trumpet Air‐Column Overloading (1970) (0)
- Studies of the Vibrations of Clarinet Reeds (1960) (0)
- Improved Equipment for Plotting Resonance Curves for Wind Instruments (1971) (0)
- Resonances in the Brass Instruments and the Hand Stopping of Horns (1968) (0)
- Generation of Harmonics in the Trumpet (1969) (0)
- Acoustical problem in the bassoon (1986) (0)
- Sound Production in the Wind Instruments (1968) (0)
- A Plea for Conformity (1968) (0)
- Influence of the trumpet mouthpiece on the input impedance of the instrument (1976) (0)
- Acoustic resistance of an annular capillary (1974) (0)
- Measurements of Clarinet Resonance Frequencies (1965) (0)
- Practical Comptrollership Textbook (1987) (0)
- Experimental Check of Theoretical Expressions for Frequency Shift and Minimum Blowing Pressure in the Clarinet (1962) (0)
- Music, Sound, and Sensation@@@The Acoustical Foundations of Music (1970) (0)
- Input Impedance Curves for Reed Instruments (1974) (0)
- Reply to “Comments on ‘A Plea for Conformity’ ” [J. Chapline, J. Acoust. Soc. Amer. 46, 475–476 (L) (1969)] (1969) (0)
- Effect of Warping of the Reed Tip on Clarinet Tone (1966) (0)
- Influence of the Reed on the Vibration Frequency of Clarinet Tones (1961) (0)
- Vibrations of the Air Column and the Reed in the Clarinet (1960) (0)
- Vibration of the Clarinet Body and its Contribution to the Clarinet Tone (1963) (0)
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