Obituary

Professor Alfonso Barone

On 10 May 1991, Professor Alfonso Barone died, in Rome, from a heart attack. Professor Barone was, throughout his long scientific life, one of the most prominent personalities of acoustics in Italy.

With ancestors from Florence and Naples and certain Spanish origins, Barone represented a typically Latin and Mediterranean personality with his human characteristics and bright scientific intelligence. He studied physics at Rome University during the grand years of the famous School of Rome, and he was an outstanding student with such great professors as Levi-Civita, Castelnuovo and Corbino. He took his first steps in research closely linked to the famous Rome group of young physicists formed by Fermi, Segr6, Amaldi Rasetti and others. He always remembered those great scientists and frequently commented on them.

The creation of the Electroacoustics Institute, 1937, by Professor O.M. Corbino, turned Barone from a direction that could easily have pointed towards theoretical physics. In fact, Professor Corbino, far-sighted in scientific perspectives, decided to promote acoustics as an emerging experimental activity, creating the Institute of Electroacoustics, with the same enthusiasm that he put into founding and developing the Rome School for Theoretical Physics. The first scientist of this new Institute, expressly appointed by Corbino, was Barone, who developed there his scientific activity for almost 50 years, complemented with lectures in the Faculty of Physics of Rome University. Barone was vice-director and director of the Institute when, after the second world war, it was called the Ultracoustics Institute and Acoustics Institute respectively. He was also the first scientist of the Italian National Research Council to have

the highest category of Research Director especially created for him.

In the scientist personality of Barone, the physical sense and deep knowledge of the most complicated phenomena clearly stood out. Predominantly, he claimed that the essential mathematical approach of the problem should not hide its real physical sense, which he knew how to reveal with the clarity and simplicity of a great teacher.

In human terms, Barone's personality was extraordinarily rich, combining kindness, naturalness and intelligence. He was, above all, a friend to his friends, with a great sense of loyalty.

In acoustics, Barone's works, began in electroacoustics and evolved to ultrasonics where he carried out intense work basically orientated to transduction and propagation in fluids. As an outstanding experimental physicist he developed methods and technologies, such as the interferometric system for propagation study in liquids, which marked a milestone. An excellent teacher, he demonstrated his expositive clearness in the volume he wrote for the Handbuch der Physick in 1962, on generation,-detection and ultrasonic measurements. Professor Barone stimulated the creation of the Ultrasonics Laboratory of the Acoustics Institute at the Spanish Research Council, and kept a long collaboration with it. We, who had the great privilege to study under the guidance of Professor Barone, and enjoy his friendship, proudly feel that we have been chosen to participate in the human and scientific richness of one of the last great masters.

J.A. Gallego-Jufirez

Ultrasonics 1992 Vol 30 No 5 343