It's not well known, but Dr. Bose had a stroke a few years ago. I was an officer of a local Acoustical Society of America chapter in Boston. Dr. Bose had been awarded a plaque at the national ASA conference in the summer of 2011, but he wasn't well enough to travel to accept the reward, so we volunteered to host a reception in Cambridge to give him the award and recognize other prominent acousticians. At that point, none of us knew what had happened to prevent him from traveling (I figured he was just really busy), but we were informed shortly before the reception.

When he arrived he was clearly still recovering (he had difficult walking and needed time to collect his thoughts before speaking), but he was still able to make a barn-burner of an acceptance speech. Afterwords, he took the time to speak to anyone who wanted to talk to him, including me.

I know audiophiles and enthusiasts have a low opinion of Bose products and their litigation strategies (some of which I share), but I had Dr. Bose as a professor in college and he was a fantastic instructor (even without the free ice cream during tests!). Students would often challenge him based on audiophile beliefs, and he would always use sound engineering arguments to refute them. And he was the only MIT prof I have saw who regularly ate meals at the Lobdell Food Court.

RIP Dr. Bose.

camera-phone picture of James Barger, Dr. Bose, Christopher Jaffe and Eric Unger at the aforementioned reception: http://twitpic.com/d2amd3

edit: bose.com has a memorial up: http://www.bose.com/remember/index.html