Michael Buckingham
Professor
Marine Physical Laboratory, SIO

Biography of Michael J. Buckingham

            Michael J. Buckingham is a Professor of Ocean Acoustics in the Marine Physical Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He received a B.Sc. (Honours) in physics and a Ph.D. in solid state physics from the University of Reading, U.K. After a three year, entirely unsuccessful effort to detect gravitational radiation from highly energetic stellar events, for which he received the Clerk Maxwell Premium from the I.E.R.E. (U.K.) in 1972, he abandoned cosmology in favour of underwater acoustics research at the Royal Aerospace Establishment, Farnborough, U.K. There he rapidly progressed to become an Individual Merit Senior Principal Scientific Officer, which allowed him the freedom to pursue his own research interests. He was an exchange scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C. from 1982-84 and a visiting professor in the Department of Ocean Engineering, M.I.T. from 1986-87. From 1988 to 1992, he was the U.K. National Representative on the Scientific Committee of the Marine Science and Technology (MAST) Programme, Commission of European Communities, Brussels, Belgium. He was a founder member of the Acoustical Oceanography Technical Committee of the Acoustical Society of America. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computational Acoustics and Editor of Reviews in Physical Acoustics for the Journal of Sound and Vibration. Concurrently with his position at Scripps, he is a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, U.K.

            Prof. Buckingham is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Acoustics (U.K.), the Institute of Electrical Engineers (U.K.) and the Explorers Club. He is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and is a Chartered Engineer (U.K.). His research has been reported in over 200 papers in the scientific literature, he has published a book on Noise in Electronic Devices and Systems, and he is co-editor of the Proceedings of the International Conference on Sea Surface Sound '94. In 1982 he was the recipient of the A. B. Wood* Medal from the Institute of Acoustics; and in 1997 received the Science Writing Award for Professionals in Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America for his article in Scientific American on "Seeing underwater with background noise". He holds a Private Pilot license with instrument and glider ratings.

*More information on A. B. Wood. (7.3 MB)