Amar Bose, founder of Bose Corporation, has died. He was 83.
Acoustics pioneer Amar Bose, founder and chairman of the audio technology company Bose Corporation, has died at age 83. Bose's death was announced on Friday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Bose's death was announced yesterday by his company Bose Corp's president, Bob Maresca, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Bose was on the faculty for more than 40 years.
Bose died yesterday at his home in Wayland, Massachusetts. His death was confirmed by his son, Dr Vanu G Bose.
"Dr Bose founded Bose Corporation almost 50 years ago with a set of guiding principles centred on research and innovation," Maresca was quoted by New York Times as saying in a statement. "That focus has never changed." Bose was born on November 2, 1929, in Philadelphia. His father, Noni Gopal Bose, was a Bengali freedom fighter who was studying physics at the Calcutta University when he was arrested and imprisoned for his opposition to British rule.
Noni Gopal Bose escaped and fled to the US in 1920, where he married an American school teacher.
At age 13, Bose began repairing radio sets for pocket money for repair shops in Philadelphia. During World War II, when his father's import business struggled, Bose's electronics repairs helped support the family.
Bose's devotion to research was matched by his passion for teaching. Having earned his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, Bose returned from a Fulbright scholarship at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi and joined the MIT faculty in 1956.
As founder and chairman of the privately held company, Bose focused relentlessly on acoustic engineering innovation.
His speakers, though expensive, earned a reputation for bringing concert-hall-quality audio into the home.
And by refusing to offer stock to the public, Bose was able to pursue risky long-term research, such as noise-cancelling headphones and an innovative suspension system for cars, without the pressures of quarterly earnings announcements.
A perfectionist and a devotee of classical music, Bose was disappointed by the inferior sound of a high-priced stereo system he purchased when he was an MIT engineering student in the 1950s.
His interest in acoustic engineering piqued, he realised that 80 per cent of the sound experienced in a concert hall was indirect, meaning that it bounced off walls and ceilings before reaching the audience.
This realisation, using basic concepts of physics, formed the basis of his research.
Bose and his ex-wife, Prema, had two children, Vanu, now the head of his own company, Vanu Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Maya Bose, who survive him, as does his second wife, Ursula, and one grandchild.
During his long tenure at MIT, Dr. Bose made his mark both in research and in teaching. In 1956, he started a research program in physical acoustics and psychoacoustics: This led to his development of many patents in acoustics, electronics, nonlinear systems and communication theory, an MIT obit reads.
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