Dah-You Maa: Most senior academic brother.

F. V. Hunt's ONR-supported acoustics lab at Harvard turned out 30 PhD graduates after WW II. As one of those students in the late 1950s, I gradually became aware that Hunt had had a prewar group of graduate students as well. Leo Beranek was Hunt's first Ph.D., Dah-You Maa his second (both in 1940). Maa's two 1939 JASA articles on room acoustics, one coauthored with Beranek and Hunt, were benchmark papers of the day. I became fascinated with Maa's story, partly because he seemed so completely unreachable. He had returned to China during the war; afterward the Cold War intervened. I finally met my much older academic brother in 1980, at the 10th ICA in Sydney, Australia. Thus began a warm and rewarding relationship. In 1987, he began representing China on the International Commission on Acoustics, and for 7 years, we saw each other annually at Commission meetings. I learned of his work on nonlinear standing waves, a problem in which I too shared a keen interest. The high point was at the 14th ICA in Beijing. I was finally able to see his laboratory and meet his doctoral student Ke Liu. A memorable dinner followed that evening.

Citation

David T Blackstock. Dah-You Maa: Most senior academic brother. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2013 May;133(5):3350

PMID: 23655021

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