Abstract:

``Dix'' Ward's professional career began about 50 years ago, when he was an undergraduate majoring in physics and practicing a life-long interest in music, both as a student and as pianist and singer. Encouraged by one of his college teachers, W. A. Rosenblith, he pursued graduate work at Harvard in the Psychoacoustic Laboratory, under S. S. Stevens. A disseration on subjective musical pitch and experimental study of the recovery of hearing after acoustic stimulation set him on a double course which continued his musical interests (first with D. W. Martin) and the study of hearing damage following noise exposure (with H. Davis and A. Glorig). Those interests were to continue as he reached his final and long-lasting appointments at the University of Minnesota. His scientific contributions have been empirical, not theoretical. He focused on finding out what is demonstrably true. His contributions as a scientific citizen were many---in the Acoustical Society, in national and international standards, in the International Society of Audiology, in CHABA, and in related government activities related to noise and noise damage.