Hammond, 29, Dies

Benjamin M. Hammond '89, a musician, songwriter and pioneer in acoustics, died suddenly in his sleep Oct. 27 from cardiac symptoms. He was 29.

Hammond's death was related to Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome, which he had carried since birth.

He was a third-year graduate fellow in the Harvard-M.I.T. Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

"I suppose the main thing that we've learned from this experience is that the feelings we had about him--his talent, intellect, gift for friends, compassion--were shared by many other people," said his father, Michael, who is the dean of music at Rice University in Houston.

"Benjamin's vibrancy, his incredible capacity for work and concentration were there from early on," his father said. "But in these last few years it developed into truly awesome proportions."

Hammond's research at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary examined how auditory nerve fibers convey speech patterns to the brain.

His teachers considered him an exemplary student.

"Terrific, terrific student," said Nelson Y.S. Kiang, the infirmary's former director of speech and hearing sciences. "Not only was he extremely competent technically, his goal was to bring several fields together which had not been very much in contact," he said, describing him as "a true leader."

Diana D. Sands, administrator of the Eaton-Peabody laboratory where Hammond studied, said Hammond "was one of the most outstanding students I have met."

Hammond was also a teaching assistant in an acoustics class. For three years, he played guitar with Shankar Ramaswami '89 and his brother, Thomas M. Hammond '90 in a rock group named "Men of Clay."

Born in Milwaukee, Hammond was under contract with a record label in New York City.

He worked at Kirkegaard and Associates, a Chicago-based acoustics firm, where he designed the outdoor sound system for Seiji Ozawa Hall at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Hammond also worked on the acoustics of Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory.

Hammond's father was President Neil L. Rudenstine's roommate as a Rhodes scholar in the mid-1950s.

"Although I met Ben only a few times, I am an old and close friend of his father," Rudenstine said in a telephone interview. "From what I gather from his friends and family, he was a very extraordinary person. This came as a really devastating and completely unexpected blow from nowhere."

A funeral mass was held Nov. 4 in Katonah, N.Y. Hammond was buried in Bedford Hills, N.Y.

"There's great sadness. You can't help but feel that the next 30 years would have produced such wonderful things. It's a loss for everyone," Hammond's father said. "But at least he had arrived somewhere. That's a wonderful gift. We're very grateful for that."

He is survived by his mother Anne L. Hammond '62, his father, his brother and his grandmother, Nancy L. Stein '33.