Allan D. Pierce was born in 1936 and spent his early years in Iowa, Kansas, and New Mexico. After receiving a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT, he was employed by RAND (1961-1963) and Avco (1963-1966). His work during these years was concerned primarily with the analysis of infrasonic waveforms generated by thermonuclear explosions, and this broadened into a life-long interest in all aspects of physical acoustics, applied mechanics, vibrations, and wave physics. From 1966 to 2012 he held a succession of professorial appointments — at MIT (1966-1973), Georgia Tech (1973-1988), Penn State (1988-1993), and Boston University (1993-2012). He retired from BU in 2012, and founded the Cape Cod Institute for Science and Engineering in 2017. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and is a recipient of the ASA Silver Medal in Physical Acoustics and the ASA Gold Medal, the ASME Per Bruel Gold Medal, the Rossing Prize for Acoustics Education, and the Gold Medal of the Acoustical Foundation of India. Over the years he has had many editorial positions, including being the founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computational Acoustics and the Editor-in-Chief of the Acoustical Society of America. He was the founding editor of Proceedings of Meetings in Acoustics.
