All of us with the ASA Standards team express our condolences to the family, colleagues and friends of Sanford “Sandy” Fidell, PhD, who passed away at 77 years old in late February. Dr. Fidell was a longtime and dedicated ASA and ASA Standards Member volunteer (and past ASA Fellow) who played an instrumental role in advancing the field of acoustics through his work in acoustics standards development.

Over the course of his long career in acoustics, Dr. Fidell became one of the world’s leading experts in the field of transportation noise annoyance and community tolerance levels. He began his transportation noise research and consulting work in the Los Angeles office of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BBN) in 1968. In 33 years at BBN, he directed theoretical, laboratory and field research in many areas of psychoacoustics and environmental acoustics.

Dr. Fidell continued his research, consulting and expert witness work on community response to noise and acoustic signal detection after forming Fidell Associates in 2001. Dr. Fidell’s career work lies to this day at the epicenter of the evolving understanding of community noise annoyance (especially through his work on airport noise controversies in a number of U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles).

In Acoustics Today, Dr. Fidell was author of “Psychoacoustics and the Community Noise Impact Assessments“(Fall 2014) and “A Review of US Aircraft Noise Regulatory Policy” (Fall 2015).

Once again, our condolences to Dr. Fidell’s family, colleagues and friends with his passing – and we’re grateful for his volunteer work with ASA and ASA Standards and for his groundbreaking, impactful work in acoustics.