Ralph Woollett and the art of transducer design at USNUSL
Charles H. Sherman · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1990
Ralph Woollett spent most of his life studying the subject of electroacoustics. He approached the subject with the attitude of a physicist, trying always to understand and to relate what he knew to basic physical laws. But he was also an engineer, analyzing the behavior of new transducer designs and creating new design concepts such as trilaminar flexural transducers and magnetostrictive drive of flexural bars. It was the good fortune of his colleagues that he also devoted much of his time to teaching them his way of looking at electroacoustics and suggesting interesting and relevant problems for them to work on. He was active in ASA and IEEE committees and was a U.S. delegate to the International Electrotechnical Commission's Subcommittee on Ultrasonics. Ralph's untimely, accidental death reminded us of a lesser known side of his personality, for he was an avid flyer and somewhat of an adventurer who was always seeking new experiences and challenges.