Albert Beaumont Wood

Who was Albert Beaumont Wood?

Albert Beaumont Wood OBE DSc, better known as A B Wood, was a British physicist, known for his pioneering work in the field of underwater acoustics and sonar.

Wood is a physicist best known for his work on developing sonar in the UK from the First World War until after the Second World War. He graduated from Manchester University with First Class Honours in 1912, where he joined a team of notable scientists led by Sir Ernest Rutherford, including Henry Moseley, Hans Geiger, Niels Bohr, Ernest Marsden, James Chadwick, George de Hevesy and Charles Galton Darwin. In 1914 he was appointed a research fellow at the University of Liverpool and then a Lecturer in Physics. He still kept in touch with Rutherford, who was working on underwater acoustics, and arranged for him to work on countering the German naval threat.

He joined the Board of Invention and Research in October 1915, shortly after its creation, to help with the UK war effort against Germany. Wood served the Admiralty in Aberdour, Parkstone Quay and Shandon working on a variety of acoustics projects.