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Memorial Tributes: Volume 21
Memorial Tributes
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.



OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Memorial Tributes
Volume 21
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS

WASHINGTON, DC 2017

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-45928-0
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-45928-1
Digital Object Identifier: https://doi.org/10.17226/24773
Additional copies of this publication are available from:
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Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS
FOREWORD, xiii
HAROLD M. AGNEW, 3
by Ricardo B. Schwarz
HARL P. ALDRICH, JR., 9

by Harl P. Aldrich III
WM. HOWARD ARNOLD, 15

by Howard Bruschi
DAVID ATLAS, 23
by Robert J. Serafin and Richard E. Carbone
HOWARD K. BIRNBAUM, 31
by Ian M. Robertson
Submitted by the NAE Home Secretary
JOHN A. BLUME, 37
by Anne Kiremidjian, James Gere, Helmut Krawinkler,
and Haresh Shah
Reprinted with the permission of the John A. Blume
Earthquake Engineering Center, Stanford University

vi CONTENTS
STUART W. CHURCHILL, 43
by Warren D. Seider
WESLEY A. CLARK, 49
by Ivan E. Sutherland, Mary Allen Wilkes,
Severo M. Ornstein, and Jerome R. Cox
WILLIAM A. CLEVENGER, 57
by Rudolph Bonaparte
THOMAS B. COOK, JR., 61

by John C. Crawford
J. BARRY COOKE, 69
by Nelson L. de S. Pinto
ALAN COTTRELL, 75
by Peter B. Hirsch
JOHN P. CRAVEN, 85
by Nicholas Johnson
CHARLES CRUSSARD, 91
by Jean Philibert
ROBERT G. DEAN, 95
by Robert A. Dalrymple
THOMAS F. DONOHUE, 101

by Jan Schilling
BRIAN L. EYRE, 105

by Colin Windsor and Ron Bullough

CONTENTS vii
JAMES L. FLANAGAN, 109

by Bishnu S. Atal and Lawrence R. Rabiner
ROBERT L. FLEISCHER, 119

by James D. Livingston and Elizabeth L. Fleischer
RENATO FUCHS, 127

by Stephen W. Drew
JOHN H. (JACK) GIBBONS, 133

by Sam Baldwin, Rosina Bierbaum,
John Holdren, and Maxine Savitz
ANDREW S. GROVE, 141

by Eugene S. Meieran
GEORGE H. HEILMEIER, 149

by Nim Cheung and Jack Howell
DAVID G. HOAG, 157

by Norman Sears
JOHN H. HORLOCK, 163

by Daniel Weinbren
RIK HUISKES, 169

by Van C. Mow and Bert van Rietbergen
JAMES D. IDOL, JR., 173

by Floyd T. Neth
DONALD G. ISELIN, 179

by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Staff

viii CONTENTS
J. DONOVAN JACOBS, 183

by William W. Edgerton
MUJID S. KAZIMI, 189

by Michael Corradini and Neil Todreas
DORIS KUHLMANN-WILSDORF, 193

by Bhatka B. Rath and Edgar A. Starke, Jr.
WALTER B. LaBERGE, 197

by Malcolm Ross O’Neill
WILLIAM J. LeMESSURIER, 205

by Richard A. Henige, Jr.
THOMAS M. LEPS, 211

by Nelson L. de S. Pinto
JOHN L. LUMLEY, 217

by Sidney Leibovich
DOUGLAS C. MacMILLAN, 223

by Allen Chin
CHARLES E. MASSONNET, 227

by Steven J. Fenves
HUDSON MATLOCK, 233

by David K. Matlock and Richard L. Tucker
WALTER G. MAY, 239

by Richard Alkire
JAMES W. MAYER, 245

by Thomas E. Everhart

CONTENTS ix
BRAMLETTE McCLELLAND, 249

by Alan G.Young
EDWARD J. McCLUSKEY, 255

by Jeffrey D. Ullman
DOUGLAS C. MOORHOUSE, 259

by Rudolph Bonaparte
JOHN W. MORRIS, 265

by Henry Hatch and Hans Van Winkle
GEORGE E. MUELLER, 271

by Robert L. Crippen
HAYDN H. MURRAY, 277

by Jessica Elzea Kogel
GERALD NADLER, 283

by Stan Settles
F. ROBERT NAKA, 287

by Curt H. Davis
GERALD T. ORLOB, 293

by Daniel P. Loucks and William W-G. Yeh
YIH-HSING PAO, 299

by Francis C. Moon, Kolumban Hutter, and Wolfgang Sachse
EUGENE J. PELTIER, 305

by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Staff

x CONTENTS
COURTLAND D. PERKINS, 311

by Irvin Glassman, Sau-Hai (Harvey) Lam,
Robert G. Jahn, and Robert M. White
EGOR P. POPOV, 317

by Robin K. McGuire
WILLIAM N. POUNDSTONE, 325

by Stan Suboleski
SIMON RAMO, 331

by Ronald D. Sugar
NORMAN C. RASMUSSEN, 337

by Kent F. Hansen
This tribute is slightly adapted from a memoir that originally
appeared in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
V. 86 (2005) and is reprinted with permission.
EUGENE M. RASMUSSON, 349

Submitted by Margaret A. Lemone,
Sumant Nigam, and John M. Wallace
DENIS ROOKE, 357

by David Wallace
STEVEN B. SAMPLE, 365

by C. L. Max Nikias
ROGER A. SCHMITZ, 371

by Joan F. Brennecke
OLEG D. SHERBY, 375

by Jeffrey Wadsworth and William D. Nix
JOEL S. SPIRA, 383

by Stephen Director and Joel Moses

CONTENTS xi
JIN WU, 387

by Marshall P. Tulin
APPENDIX, 391


FOREWORD
T HIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST VOLUME in the Memorial Tributes

series compiled by the National Academy of Engineering as a
personal remembrance of the lives and outstanding achieve-
ments of its members and foreign members. These volumes are
intended to stand as an enduring record of the many contribu-
tions of engineers and engineering to the benefit of humankind.
In most cases, the authors of the tributes are contemporaries or
colleagues who had personal knowledge of the interests and
engineering accomplishments of the deceased.
Through its members and foreign members, the Academy
carries out the responsibilities for which it was established in
1964. Under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences,
the National Academy of Engineering was formed as a par-
allel organization of outstanding engineers. Members are
elected by their peers on the basis of significant contributions
to engineering theory, practice, and literature or for excep-
tional accomplishments in the pioneering of new and develop-
ing fields of technology. The National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine share a responsibility to advise
the federal government on matters of science and technology.
The expertise and credibility that the National Academy of
Engineering brings to that task stem directly from the abili-
ties, interests, and achievements of our members and foreign
members—our colleagues and friends—whose special gifts
we remember in these pages.
Julia M. Phillips
Home Secretary
xiii


Memorial Tributes


HAROLD M. AGNEW
1921–2013
Elected in 1976
“Pioneering contributions in weapons engineering and combining

science and engineering into effective technology.”
BY RICARDO B. SCHWARZ
HAROLD MELVIN AGNEW, a scientist who worked on the

Manhattan Project that gave the United States its first atomic
bomb and who later became the third director of Los Alamos
National Laboratory, died September 29, 2013, at his home in
Solana Beach, California. He was 92.
He was born March 28, 1921, in Denver, the only child of a
stonecutter father and homemaker mother. He attended South
Denver High School and the University of Denver, where he
majored in chemistry.
After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the
United States into World War II, Agnew and his girlfriend,
Beverly Jackson, attempted to join the US Army Air Corps
together. But Joyce Stearns, head of the Physics Department at
the University of Denver, persuaded them to instead join him
at the University of Chicago, where Stearns became deputy
head of the Metallurgical Laboratory.
In Chicago, Harold worked with Enrico Fermi and others
on the construction of Chicago Pile-1, the first graphite-
moderated nuclear reactor. Initially, he worked on instrumen-
tation, calibrating Geiger counters, and then on stacking the
graphite bricks that formed the reactor’s neutron moderator.
On December 2, 1942, he witnessed the first self-sustained
nuclear chain reaction when Pile-1 went critical.
3

4 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
After these successful tests, he and Beverly, now married,

followed Fermi and others to Los Alamos to participate in the
Manhattan Project for the development of a nuclear bomb.
Toward the completion of the project, scientists were faced
with the problem of measuring the yield of the device they
had just built. With Luis Alvarez and Lawrence Johnson,
Agnew devised a remarkable method to measure the yield of
the nuclear blast by dropping pressure gauges on parachutes
from airplanes just before the explosion and telemetering the
readings back to the plane. During the bombing of Hiroshima
on August 6, 1945, Agnew, Alvarez, and Johnson flew as sci-
entific observers on a second plane and measured the yield of
the explosion. Agnew also took, on his own initiative, a hand-
held 16-millimeter movie camera and filmed the only existing
movies of the Hiroshima event as seen from the air.
When the war ended, Agnew received a National Research
Council Fellowship that allowed him to attend the University
of Chicago and complete his graduate studies under Fermi.
After earning his PhD in 1949, he returned to Los Alamos,
where he led several weapons-related projects and in 1964
became head of the Weapons Engineering Division.
While working at Los Alamos, Agnew held a number of
military advisory positions: scientific advisor to the NATO
Supreme Allied Commanders (1961–1964) and member of
the Defense Science Board (1966–1970), the Army’s Scientific
Advisory Panel (1966–1974), and the Army Science Board
(1978–1984). He also chaired the General Advisory Committee
of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1974–1978)
and served on NASA’s Aerospace Advisory Panel (1968–1974).
In 1970 he became the third director of Los Alamos National
Laboratory (then called Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory),
which he headed for nearly a decade during times of great
change. He left his imprint in many areas. Under his leader-
ship, the laboratory developed an underground test contain-
ment program, completed the Meson Physics Facility, acquired
its first Cray supercomputer, and trained the first class of
International Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspectors. Los
Alamos was commissioned with developing the W76 device,

HAROLD M. AGNEW 5
used by Trident I and Trident II submarine-launched ballis-

tic missiles, and the W78 device, used by Minuteman II inter-
continental ballistic missiles. He was particularly proud of
advances made at the laboratory in the configuration of these
devices and in developing new insensitive high explosives
that enhance safety in the handling and storage of nuclear
weapons.
In addition, he supervised the development of optimum
weaponry to support the international deterrent posture
assumed in the 1960s. He also recognized the importance of
introducing technical diversity into the laboratory. Until he
became director, virtually every program was tied, directly
or indirectly, to weapons work. The multidisciplinary labora-
tory of today, initiated by Agnew in the 1970s, devotes a large
percentage of its budget to nonweapons scientific research,
including topics in basic sciences and biomedicine.
After retiring in 1979 Agnew became president and CEO
of General Atomics in San Diego. In that position, which he
held until 1985, he pushed for the development of safe reactor
technologies and was a vocal advocate of the civilian use of
nuclear power.
In recognition of his work he received two prestigious
Department of Energy awards: the E.O. Lawrence Award
(1966) and the Enrico Fermi Award (1978). Along with Nobel
Laureate Hans Bethe, he was the first to receive the Los Alamos
National Laboratory Medal (2001). In addition to the NAE, he
was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (1979). And
in 1982–1989 he served as a White House science councillor,
advising President Reagan.
In 1991 he participated in the first post–Cold War meeting
between American bomb makers and their Russian counter-
parts, seeking ways to reduce nuclear arsenals. One year later
he urged the United States to buy bomb-grade uranium from
scrapped Soviet nuclear warheads, which would bolster the
Russian economy and reduce the risk of an accident or the
theft of nuclear materials. In August of that year the White
House announced a plan to buy at least 500 metric tons of the
material in a deal worth several billion dollars. The Russian

6 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
bomb-grade uranium was diluted into fuel for domestic

nuclear reactors that generate electricity, transforming a huge
potential danger into a peaceful bonanza.
Agnew was a plain-spoken person, never afraid to share his
opinions about controversial issues. In a 1992 interview (with
Theresa Strottman, Los Alamos Historical Society), he was
asked whether he would do it all again. He replied, “I have no
regrets. [Los Alamos National Laboratory] was a great place,
still is a great place. I just hope they don’t get bureaucratized
by the Washington environment. People there seem to forget
what the real objective of a national lab is and want to control
things more and more…. I don’t think that’s very good in the
long run. Maybe it will turn around.” In a 2005 BBC interview
he said, “About three quarters of the US nuclear arsenal was
designed under my tutelage at Los Alamos. That is my legacy.”
Harold Agnew had an impressive life that paralleled the
development of nuclear energy: He participated in the first
controlled nuclear chain reaction; assisted in the development
of the first atomic bomb; witnessed the first (and only) use of
that weapon in war; and was instrumental in enhancing the
safety and reliability of the nuclear arsenal. Ironically, his final
project, with the goal of augmenting the use of nuclear energy
for electrical power generation in the United States, did not
flourish as he desired because of society’s concerns about the
safety of nuclear energy.



H A R L P. A L D R I C H , J R .
1923–2014
Elected in 1984
“For fundamental contributions to understanding of freezing

problems and preloading techniques, also leadership in
development of geotechnical engineering practice.”
BY HARL P. ALDRICH III
HARL PRESLAR ALDRICH, JR., cofounder of the Boston-

based consulting engineering firm of Haley & Aldrich Inc., died
November 24, 2014. He was 91.
He was born in Spokane on June 21, 1923, son of Harl
and Lucy (Cooley) Aldrich. From an early age, he wanted
to become a civil engineer. After attending the University of
Idaho for two years, he enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT), where he received his BS and ScD degrees
in the Department of Civil and Sanitary Engineering in 1947
and 1951. He served on the MIT faculty for six years and was
a visiting lecturer on soil mechanics at Harvard University in
1955–1956.
He was proud to be a civil engineer and, among young
engineers in particular, promoted the importance of active
participation in professional organizations. He was a leader
in professional societies in Boston, serving as president of
the Massachusetts Section of the American Society of Civil
Engineers (ASCE) in 1964 and president of the Boston Society
of Civil Engineers in 1968–1969. He was an honorary member
Adapted from the Concord Journal, November 29–December 6, 2014

(online at www.legacy.com/obituaries/wickedlocal-concord/obituary.
aspx?pid=173312846).
9

10 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
of the Boston Society Section of ASCE, a national distinguished

member of ASCE, and a life fellow of the American Council of
Engineering Companies.
He authored numerous technical papers in national and
international journals and conference proceedings related pri-
marily to soil mechanics and foundations, groundwater, frost
penetration, and dam safety. He received several awards for
papers published in the Journal of the Boston Society of Civil
Engineers.
In 1957 Dr. Aldrich and James F. Haley founded Haley &
Aldrich, a firm of geotechnical engineers, geologists, hydro-
geologists, and environmental scientists, originally based in
Cambridge. During his 35-year career with the firm, Aldrich
served as principal on numerous major projects and as presi-
dent and chairman. His dedication to teaching was one of the
hallmarks of his leadership style, creating a mentoring and
learning culture at the company that continues to this day.
The Boston-based firm now has many employees located in 27
offices throughout the United States.
In 1969 Haley & Aldrich was one of 10 founding firms of
ASFE, the Geoprofessional Business Association (at the time
known as the Associated Soil and Foundation Engineers).
Dr. Aldrich had been active from the outset, one of several
members who served on the board of directors and led the
development of ASFE’s highly successful peer review pro-
gram. In addition, he was president of Terra Insurance Ltd. and
a member of the board of the Design Professionals Financial
Corporation, both professional liability insurance companies.
After the failure of Teton Dam in southeastern Idaho in 1976,
Dr. Aldrich chaired the National Research Council Committee
on the Safety of Dams, which reviewed US Bureau of
Reclamation practices and procedures for ensuring the safety
of water storage dams for which the bureau was responsible.
Among his many honors, Dr. Aldrich was elected to the NAE
in 1984, and in 2004 he was selected for ASCE’s OPAL Award
for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Management. He
was also a member of the honorary societies Sigma Xi, Tau
Beta Pi, and Chi Epsilon.

HARL P. ALDRICH, JR. 11
He was active in creating The Engineering Center (TEC)

in Boston, having chaired the fundraising committee for TEC
Education Trust (TECET) and serving as TECET founding
trustee in 1989. The Trust purchased One Walnut Street, the
Phillips-Winthrop House on Beacon Hill, for the TEC home.
In recognition of his leadership, the TEC Aldrich Conference
Center was dedicated in 1998, when he and Charles H.
Spaulding received the first TEC Leadership Awards.
Throughout his career, Dr. Aldrich was a devoted a lumnus
of MIT. He was president of the Alumni Association in 1980–
1981 and served on the MIT Corporation in 1980–1986; for
three of those years he was on the executive committee. He
was a member of the Corporation Development Committee
and received its Marshall B. Dalton ’15 Award in 1996. He
chaired gift committees for his Class of 1947 reunions and held
the Bronze Beaver, the highest award the Association of MIT
Alumni and Alumnae bestows on its volunteers.
A resident of Concord, Massachusetts, for 62 years, Aldrich
was active at the Trinitarian Congregational Church, where he
served in many roles, from chair of the building committee for
a church school wing in 1955 to moderator, deacon, and chair
of the Stewardship, Property, and other committees. For the
town of Concord, he was a member and chair of the Public
Works Commission.
After his retirement from Haley & Aldrich in 1992, he
became interested in the genealogy of his family and authored
two books published by Penobscot Press, A Branch of the
Aldrich Family in America (1996) and George Lathrop Cooley and
Clara Elizabeth Hall: Their Ancestors and Descendants in America
(2001). At one time, he played tennis and was an avid gardener.
He and his wife were frequent travelers.
Aldrich was a veteran of World War II, having served in the
Navy V-5 Flight Training Program in 1944 and 1945. During
his training at the University of Iowa in 1944 he met his wife,
the former Lois A. Grissell of Cedar Rapids, where they mar-
ried on February 23, 1946.
In addition to his wife of 68 years he is survived by daugh-
ters Katheryn Aldrich of Talent, OR, Barbara Robb of Calais,

ME, and Jean Barrett Somerville of Alpharetta, GA; sons Harl

Aldrich III of Kalispell, MT, and Kent Aldrich of Tigard, OR;
eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.



W M . H O WA R D A R N O L D
1931–2015
Elected in 1974
“Contributions to design of commercial pressurized water reactors for nuclear

systems and to systems engineering of light water nuclear power plants.”
BY HOWARD BRUSCHI
WILLIAM HOWARD ARNOLD JR. was a pioneer in the

design of early commercial pressurized water reactors and an
energetic leader of the commercial nuclear industry. He passed
away July 16, 2015, at the age of 84.
Howard, as he was known, was born May 13, 1931, in
Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, a few miles south of St. Louis.
His mother was Lib Arnold and his father was Lieutenant
General William Howard (“Duke”) Arnold, commander of
the 5th US Army and a division commander under General
Douglas MacArthur. Howard was an Army brat, accustomed
to relocating where his father’s army career took the family.
His father advised him to become an engineer, which he felt
better suited Howard’s temperament than the military.
A bright high school student, Howard won a four-year
Pepsi-Cola Scholarship to Cornell University at age 16. He
studied chemical engineering, physics, and chemistry and
graduated in 1951 with an AB in a double major of physics
and chemistry. While there he rowed crew, not only enjoying
it as a break from studying but also undoubtedly (and per-
haps unconsciously) absorbing the importance of “pulling
together” as a team.
He went on to study physics at Princeton University, where
he was inspired by the faculty, one of whom arranged for his
15

students to sit with Albert Einstein in his kitchen—reminisc-

ing about his own student days. Howard received his master’s
in 1953 and PhD in 1955, both in physics.
It was at Princeton that Howard met his future wife,
Josephine Inman Routheau, known to all as Jodie, to whom
he was married for 63 years. She is the daughter of Colonel
Edward and Josephine Routheau; Colonel Routheau was in
charge of ROTC at Princeton.
After completing his degrees Howard accepted an offer to
work in Princeton for Westinghouse Electric Corporation on
fusion energy. But the company’s endeavor in this area did not
last long and decades later brought to Howard’s mind a state-
ment he had heard about fusion: “It’s the energy of the future
and always will be.”
In the fall of 1955 Howard joined Westinghouse’s newly
formed commercial atomic power activity. From then until
1961, as a senior engineer and section manager, he was
responsible for the reactor physics design of the first series
of Westinghouse commercial reactors in the United States,
Belgium, France, and Italy.
It was during this time that he made major contributions to
the nuclear industry. He developed models and analytical tech-
niques to determine such factors as control rod “worth” avail-
able for managing reactivity in a nuclear core, accounting for
neutron capture in the resonance range of neutron energy, and
a value for the temperature coefficient of reactivity. His work
became the basis for much of the computer software for nuclear
reactor core design developed over the decades that followed.
From 1961 to 1968 Howard held positions as deputy engi-
neering manager, operations manager, and program manager
for the Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Applications Project
at the Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory. The goal of the
project was to design a nuclear rocket engine to take humans to
Mars. Howard was responsible for all the analytical phases of
the design and testing. Years of engineering and testing dem-
onstrated not only the proof of principle but also the viability
of an engine concept. The program was eventually halted by
the government as interest was lost for a mission to Mars.

WM. HOWARD ARNOLD 17
Howard’s next assignment took him from space to “under-

water” as he became manager (1968–1970) of the Underseas
Weapons Department, Westinghouse Defense Center, respon-
sible for completing development of the Mark 48 torpedo. This
project was highly successful and Westinghouse got a contract
to produce 10 prototypes for operational testing. The Mark 48
basic design remains the primary underseas weapon of the US
submarine fleet.
In 1970 Howard returned to the commercial nuclear energy
business at Westinghouse. He was appointed engineering
manager for the Pressurized Water Reactor Systems Division
(PWRSD), a position he held for two years, followed by his
appointment as general manager until 1979. The division was
responsible for engineering, procurement, and project man-
agement for the Westinghouse systems incorporated in US
and international utility nuclear generating stations.
PWRSD was a large, multidisciplinary, diverse organi-
zation with a mix of engineers and scientists from both the
Navy’s nuclear program and the commercial world. Howard
skillfully led this organization, maintaining principles of stan-
dardization, to successfully deliver approximately 60 pressur-
ized water reactors to utility customers around the world. His
experience in approaching engineering from a systems per-
spective was an important element of this success.
Once asked, as a member of the Cornell crew team, what
part of his body ached the most after a race, he replied, “If we
all did it right, every part of our bodies ached!” Organizations
pulling together and working in a team-like manner were
obviously important. When tensions arose with regard to the
respective roles of centralized engineering (keepers of stan-
dardization) and project managers (responsible for on-time
quality delivery and customer satisfaction), Howard penned
a letter to all employees defining roles, with a simile for the
project manager as the conductor of a symphony.
He introduced a program of organizational development
(one of the first at the time) to develop and promote more team-
work through better, open communication that was 2-way—
not only from manager to employee but also managers listening

to employee issues and suggestions. Adjusting the culture was

challenging as many in the organization were accustomed to
a top-down directive approach. While the program had mixed
results, it certainly energized people to contribute their best
by removing obstacles to performance. The financial success
of PWRSD spoke for itself.
From 1981 to 1986 Howard was general manager of the
Westinghouse Advanced Energy Systems Division. He was
responsible for the final stages of the Clinch River Breeder
program and pursued numerous new business opportunities
for the business unit, including the development of a small
passive pressurized water reactor (10MWe), funded by the US
Department of Energy, that became the seminal design inno-
vation for the AP600 and AP1000 nuclear plant designs. Four
AP1000s are being constructed in China and four in the United
States—the first new nuclear power plants to be built in this
country in 32 years. Another successful business opportunity
was the Hanford nuclear site operations contract. Howard
was appointed vice president of the Westinghouse Hanford
Company responsible for engineering, development, and
projects management, a position he held from 1986 to 1989,
when he retired from Westinghouse.
He then became president of Louisiana Energy Services, a
partnership of Urenco, Duke Power, Fluor Daniel, Northern
States Power, and Louisiana Power and Light whose goal was
to build the first privately owned uranium enrichment facility
in the United States. After his retirement from this position in
1996, he was a consultant to the nuclear industry until 2004.
On September 10, 2004, he was appointed by President
George W. Bush to the US Nuclear Waste Technical Review
Board, an independent federal agency called out in the con-
gressional Nuclear Waste Policy Act statutes. Members are
presidential appointees chosen from a list provided to the
White House by the National Academy of Engineering.
Howard was elected to the NAE in 1974. This was an
honor he took seriously and he demonstrated such by his
active involvement in the NAE and its sister institution, the
National Research Council, for 40+ years. He chaired the NAE

WM. HOWARD ARNOLD 19
peer committee for Section 6: Electric Power/Energy Systems

Engineering. He also served on the Committee on Magnetic
Fusion in Energy Policy, Panel on Cooperation with the
USSR on Reactor Safety (after Chernobyl), and Committee
on Improving Practices for Regulating and Managing Low-
Activity Radioactive Waste, and he chaired the Committee on
Improving the Scientific Basis for Managing Nuclear Materials
and Spent Fuel through the Environmental Management
Science Program.
In addition to the NAE, Howard was a member of the
American Physical Society; fellow of the American Nuclear
Society (ANS), where he chaired the Aerospace Division and
served on the board of directors; and fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. He received
an ANS Silver Certificate in 1983 for 25 years of continuous
membership and valuable contributions, and the ANS Reactor
Technology Award in 2010.
He authored 18 articles and 27 papers on physics, nuclear
engineering, and related subjects. He held two patents in
nuclear engineering design and was a registered Professional
Engineer in Pennsylvania.
Even as Howard’s career involved multiple positions, geo-
graphic locations, and business trips, he was a devoted hus-
band, father, and grandfather who cherished family reunions
every summer. He had spent the summers of his youth in
Michigan near the water; he won several sailing trophies on
Lake Macatawa, and many years later, in 1964, he and Jodie
purchased a lot on the shore of Lake Michigan. He designed
and built a cottage on the lot in 1965, expanded it in 1984,
and it subsequently became their permanent home, the site of
enduring extended family summer reunions. Jodie still resides
in the area.
He and Jodie had married while he was a graduate stu-
dent at Princeton and she was a junior at Smith College. He
enjoyed telling the following story: “Jodie went to the dean
at Princeton to see if she could enroll there. He said to her,
‘Jodie, you can sit in any class you want, but over my dead
body will a woman ever graduate from Princeton.’ The dean

had already rolled over in his grave a number of times before

our daughter Frances graduated in 1979.” Howard was espe-
cially proud that he and Frances are the only father-daughter
pair elected to the NAE (Frances was elected in 2000). Howard
and Jodie also have four sons—William Howard III, Edward,
David, and Thomas—and 10 grandchildren.
Howard’s life was replete with great accomplishments, a
closeknit family, and many good friends. His obituary includes
a poignant snippet that gives further insight into the nature of
the man he was: “Howard was extremely active to the end,
riding his bicycle around town, playing bridge, and giving lec-
tures at Hope College on nuclear energy. Howard loved and
had many good dogs, and one excellent cat.”



D AV I D AT L A S
1924–2015
Elected in 1986
“For contributions, inventions, leadership, and public service in the

application of radar and electromagnetic engineering to meteorology.”
BY ROBERT J. SERAFIN AND RICHARD E. CARBONE
For more than 50 years DAVID ATLAS was among the most
influential people in the field of meteorology and a leading
figure in the subdiscipline of radar meteorology. Researcher,
inventor, laboratory leader, and educator, his contributions
were both broad and deep. He passed away November 10,
2015, at age 91.
A member of Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation (Random
House, 2001), Dave was born May 25, 1924, the third child of
Isadore and Rose Jaffee Atlas, immigrants from Poland and
Russia, respectively. His family was of less than modest means,
though there was always food on the table. The extended
family was a closeknit clan centered mostly in the East New
York section of Brooklyn.
Dave did well in public school, revered his teachers, and
was highly motivated by them. He edited the Spanish maga-
zine, presided over the Pan American Club, and graduated at
age 16. His attempts to play the accordion led to the realiza-
tion that he had no natural talent for it. He went on to marry
Lucille Rosen, and they raised two children, Robert and Joan.
Adapted and reprinted with the permission of the American Meteo

rological Society.
23

He planned to be an electrical engineer when he entered

the City College of New York, where his special joy was fresh-
man physics. While a student, he held a job at Western Electric
where he worked on a production line for the munificent
salary of $35 per week, nearly as much as his father made.
The events of December 7, 1941, changed his plans, as they
did for millions of people around the world. He accelerated
his education with a heavy courseload and summer school,
expecting to join the military in some capacity. Soon thereafter
he applied to premeteorology training in the Army Air Corps,
despite not knowing exactly what meteorology entailed—
prior to this he apparently had little if any interest in it. He
was rejected, but reapplied—giving the same information—
and was accepted.
He reported for active duty at New York University, where
Louis Battan became his roommate, best man, and lifetime
friend and colleague. Dave finished first in class and was com-
missioned second lieutenant in 1944. The Weather Instrument
Training School then introduced him to basic electronics as
preparation for Harvard/MIT Radar School.
A major factor that set the stage for his career was the GI
Bill, whose financial assistance enabled him to earn his DSc in
1955 from MIT. At the time he was also working as chief of the
Weather Radar Branch at the Air Force Cambridge Research
Laboratory (AFCRL). A mere two years later he received the
Meisinger Award, his reputation having grown by leaps and
bounds in what was now broadly recognized as an exciting
new branch of meteorology.
Among his early and very significant accomplishments was
his invention of the isoecho contour mapping concept in 1947,
while he was a member of the All Weather Flying Division
at Clinton Air Force Base in Wilmington, Ohio. A patent was
granted in 1953. The isoecho contour method was the first to
quantize and thus quantify weather radar reflectivity informa-
tion on cathode ray tubes. This relatively simple concept was
in widespread use for decades both on commercial aircraft and
ground-based operational weather radars and by the research
community. It was not until the advent of color displays in the

DAVID ATLAS 25
early 1970s that isoecho displays began to be replaced. Indeed,

many airline pilots objected strongly to the loss of the tradi-
tional CRT displays when color technology became available.
Dave recruited Roger Lhermitte from France to AFCRL.
Their early collaborations with Doppler radar led to outstand-
ing discoveries. On the occasion of the first Doppler velocity-
azimuth display measurements, Lhermitte attached an audio
speaker to the Doppler output. Dave said, “To our astonish-
ment and exquisite pleasure on 2 Dec 1957, we heard and tape
recorded the Doppler shift as it varied in pitch from near zero
frequency when it was pointed crosswind, to high frequencies
when it was pointing either up- or downwind.” This set the
stage for several decades of Doppler radar research and devel-
opment and ultimately operational applications.
Somewhat to Dave’s dismay, the United States was unable
to install a national Doppler radar network until the 1990s,
but this was followed by the deployment of airport terminal
Doppler radars. These two operational radar systems have dra-
matically improved short-term weather warnings and saved
thousands of lives and billions of dollars’ worth of damage.
In 1972 he joined the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR). There he was the founding director of the
Atmospheric Technology Division (ATD), which provided a
broad range of observational and computational facilities for
research community use. He brought a vision to NCAR that
included a state-of-the-art array of next-generation observ-
ing facilities. There would be Doppler radars, automated
surface stations, next-generation sounding systems, lidars,
acoustic sounders, and new airborne instruments, including
an airborne Doppler radar. Dave’s major contributions were to
get the ball rolling by articulating his vision and hiring staff,
including the authors of this tribute.
Within two years there were two transportable C-band
Doppler radars that became a mainstay of university research
for about two decades. The Portable Automated Mesonetwork
(PAM) was the first fully automated mesonet reporting its
data via radio telemetry and later via satellite. The new radars
and PAM helped to transform the way field experiments were

conducted because the real-time data displays greatly facili-

tated knowledge of “present weather.” This improved under-
standing of the initiation, growth, and decay of convective
storms, extratropical cyclones, tropical rainfall, and other phe-
nomena. Detection of hazardous windshear and microbursts
using these radars led to agency deployment of Doppler
radars for aviation safety in the United States and internation-
ally, undoubtedly saving countless lives.
After two years at the helm of ATD Dave was asked to
assume leadership of the National Hail Research Experiment
(NHRE), a weather modification program aimed at demon-
strating the effectiveness of hail suppression, initially moti-
vated by claims of success in the Soviet Union. After several
years of field experimentation it appeared to Atlas that no
positive effect on the suppression of hail would be detectable,
if only because of the great natural variability of hailstorms.
To the dissatisfaction of the weather modification community,
Dave felt strongly that experimental evidence was sufficient to
temporarily cease cloud seeding to analyze existing data and
reexamine the basic hypotheses for hail suppression.
Faced with federal program manager resistance, however,
Dave resigned from the NHRE directorship as a matter of
principle. He was later vindicated by major NHRE successes,
gained from new understanding of deep moist convection
more generally, but statistically failing to suppress hail.
During his tenure at NCAR Dave was elected president of
the American Meteorological Society (AMS). His term was
marked by a focus on atmospheric science and public policy.
As president-elect in 1974 he, and Lucille, were part of the first
post–Cultural Revolution scientific delegation to the People’s
Republic of China. This historic visit was the forerunner of
decades of scientific collaboration between the two countries.
In 1977 he left NCAR for the Goddard Space Flight Center
(GSFC), where he was given carte blanche to build the new
Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences (GLAS) and
established a new vision for atmospheric research programs.
He placed scientific excellence at the top of his priorities,
attracting 35 new scientists to GLAS, among them Michael

DAVID ATLAS 27
King, Joanne Simpson, Louis Uccellini, Antonio Busalacchi,

and many others who became prominent in their fields.
Dave’s interests quickly broadened to encompass the full
spectrum of active and passive remote sensing of the atmo-
sphere, oceans, and Earth’s surface. He played an impor-
tant role in defining the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
(TRMM), working closely with Simpson and colleagues from
Japan to implement the first meteorological radar in space.
TRMM has provided unprecedented detail on the structure
and distribution of rainfall and improved estimation of cumu-
lative rainfall over tropical oceans—information essential for
understanding the Earth’s energy budget and water cycle.
Among Dave’s principal written legacies is Radar in
Meteorology (AMS, 1990), which he produced and edited
from proceedings of the Louis Battan Memorial and 40th
Anniversary Radar Meteorology Conference. The confer-
ence format was designed by Dave, working closely with
the AMS Committee on Radar Meteorology. Tutorial papers
were w ritten and delivered by the foremost experts in the
field. Thanks to Dave’s dogged determination (and prodding
of authors), the book is the most comprehensive collection of
contributions in this field ever produced under one cover.
It is informative to examine Atlas’ extensive publication
record from the viewpoint of peer interest in his work. Among
more than 230 papers, his most highly cited works span 40 years,
1953–1993. They originated in similar proportion at each of
his principal affiliations: AFCRL, the University of Chicago,
NCAR, and GSFC. His most frequently cited publication over-
all is the 160-page Advances in Radar Meteorology (1964), the
first textbook type of publication that reviewed Doppler signal
theory in depth. It was a treasure trove of empirical relation-
ships among reflectivity factor, attenuation, water content,
and rainfall rate and presented some novel interpretations of
the radar equation, complications of Mie scattering, and mul-
tiple wavelength responses to hydrometeors.
The Atlas papers can be topically grouped in four broad
categories:

• microwave scattering and attenuation properties of

hydrometeors
• techniques for reduction of bias and uncertainty in radar
rainfall estimation
• studies related to atmospheric turbulence and mesoscale
air flow
• studies related to radar echoes in optically clear air.
Dave retired from NASA in 1984, but his enthusiasm for

science and discovery never waned. After retirement he con-
tributed substantially to the understanding of tropical rainfall
processes through his many collaborative papers on TRMM-
related topics. He became interested in microburst and wind-
shear detection for aviation safety and invented and patented
a technique through which low-level windshear could be
detected with fan-beam air traffic control radars at airports.
He was an AMS fellow and honorary member, and, in addi-
tion to the Meisinger Award, received the society’s Cleveland
Abbe Award for Distinguished Service to Atmospheric Science
(1983), Carl-Gustav Rossby Research Medal (1996), and honor-
ary membership for the totality of his contributions. In 1991
he was selected as AMS Remote Sensing Lecturer, which was
renamed the Remote Sensing Prize in 2008 and again renamed
the David and Lucille Atlas Remote Sensing Prize beginning
in 2017. In 2011 he received the NAE’s prestigious Founders
Award.
Dave’s achievements were the result of his many qualities—
persistence, intellect, creativity, enthusiasm, and love for sci-
ence. As a taskmaster, there is little doubt he elevated the
accomplishments of others to levels they might not otherwise
have achieved. Another factor that shaped his career is per-
haps best described as “serendipity,” a term he often used. In
his memoir, Reflections (AMS, 2001), he wrote that he “began to
realize that one had to be opportunistic and flexible to exploit
events when they occurred.”
Dave set out to become an electronics engineer but was
drawn into meteorology by his assignment to service in war.
It turned out that his multidisciplinary education and training

DAVID ATLAS 29
had prepared him ideally for the emerging field of radar mete-
orology. He used his innate talents and a lot of hard work to
accomplish the rest.
Dave loved his wife, children, and grandchildren. He skied
(water and snow) and played tennis. His curiosity extended to
spirituality and religion.
This man who set very high professional standards was also
a man with great compassion for others, who would do almost
anything to help a friend. He touched the lives of hundreds,
perhaps thousands of people worldwide. There are many of
us who can claim to have been a friend and colleague of Dave
Atlas, a privilege and honor that we cherish greatly.


H O WA R D K . B I R N B A U M
1932–2005
Elected in 1988
“For exceptional work on the effect of hydrogen and

hydrogen embrittlement on properties of metals.”
BY IAN M. ROBERTSON
SUBMITTED BY THE NAE HOME SECRETARY
HOWARD KENT BIRNBAUM, 73, emeritus professor of the

Department of Materials Science and Engineering and emeritus
director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at
the University of Illinois, died January 23, 2005, in Champaign.
He was known throughout the world for his pioneering con-
tributions to the fundamental mechanisms controlling the
mechanical properties of metals and in particular for the dis-
covery and development of the hydrogen-enhanced localized
plasticity mechanism of hydrogen-induced degradation of
materials.
His work on hydrogen in metals included the discovery of
quantum tunneling to account for the low-temperature diffu-
sion of hydrogen, hydrogen trapping, ordering, phase trans-
formations, and embrittlement. Through the novel use of a
transmission electron microscope he demonstrated that the
introduction of hydrogen to a metal accelerated the produc-
tion and enhanced the mobility of dislocations. He explained
this effect by developing the hydrogen shielding mechanism,
now known as the hydrogen-enhanced localized plasticity
(HELP) mechanism, accepted as a viable mechanism of hydro-
gen embrittlement.
Howard was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 18,
1932, to Ida and Jack Birnbaum, who were Polish immigrants.
31

His passion and talent for engineering started early and

he applied and was admitted to the prestigious Brooklyn
Technical High School (1946–1950). He earned his BS (1953)
and MS (1955) in metallurgy from Columbia University.
He followed his advisor Thomas A. Read from Columbia
University to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and received his PhD in 1958. This was a major decision for
Howard as the trip to Illinois was his first west of the Hudson
River; it marked the beginning of his career in the Midwest.
After his PhD he moved to the University of Chicago,
first as an instructor and then as an assistant professor in the
Institute for the Study of Metals. His time there was brief and
he returned to the University of Illinois in 1961. Nevertheless,
his tenure at the institute and his mentorship by Charles
Barrett impacted his career as he learned the importance and
value of interdisciplinary research.
Throughout his career, Howard was a champion of inter-
disciplinary research. This was exemplified in his leadership
of the broad materials science and engineering community at
Illinois as director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research
Laboratory, a position he held from 1987 until he retired from
the University of Illinois in 1999. After that, his natural intu-
ition and his mastery across multiple disciplines allowed him
to continue his research, teaching, and mentorship of faculty
and students despite his failing eyesight.
Howard’s contributions and achievements were recognized
by membership in the National Academy of Engineering
(1988) and fellowship status in the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences (1996), Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society
(1995), American Physical Society (APS; 1971), American
Society of Metals (ASM; 1988), and American Association for
the Advancement of Science (1992). Among his numerous
awards were a Guggenheim Fellowship (1967), the Department
of Energy Prize for Outstanding Research in Metallurgy and
Ceramics (1984 and 1988), the Robert F. Mehl Gold Medal from
the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers
(1986), and the Von Hippel Award from the Materials Research
Society (MRS; 2002).

HOWARD K. BIRNBAUM 33
He was an articulate and persuasive spokesperson for the

needs and future of materials science and engineering and
served on numerous committees and panels for federal funding
agencies, the national laboratories, professional societies, and
journals. For example, he was a member of the board of gov-
ernors for Argonne National Laboratory and Acta Metallurgica,
he served on advisory committees for the Advanced Photon
Source at Argonne National Laboratory and SLAC National
Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, as well as on
the APS, MRS, and ASM councils. Through these and many
other activities Howard helped to shape the field of materials
science and engineering both nationally and internationally.
I was recruited to the University of Illinois as a postdoctoral
fellow in 1982 to work in Howard’s group on the transmis-
sion electron microscope experiments related to hydrogen
embrittlement. Over the next few years, Howard and I spent
countless hours working side by side on the experiments that
showed hydrogen enhancing the velocity of dislocations. I
found it remarkable that someone of his stature would want to
be directly connected to the experiments, but I quickly learned
the pleasure he derived from actually doing the research. He
enjoyed designing and building equipments to probe new
areas of research; he assumed everything was possible if we
put our minds to it. Those days in the microscope room with
Howard were an incredible experience and the collaboration
and learning continued for another 20 years.
Although he was known as demanding and a fierce debater
and defender of the HELP mechanism, he was best known for
his loyalty and friendship, which were brought home to me
after my first conference presentation on the HELP mecha-
nism. The questioning was tough and I remember feeling
somewhat discouraged after the talk. Howard just smiled
and commented that it went better than he expected. He then
introduced me to the members of the “opposition” and we
arranged to meet for further discussion. The debate was again
fierce, as it often was with Howard, but it was between friends.
I was reminded of the extent of Howard’s friendships
as we gathered in 2006 to celebrate his achievements and

accomplishments. Friends from around the world paid tribute

to their sometime adversary but always friend. Listening to
the personal recollections at that meeting, I was reminded of
his sense of humor and what fun it was to spend time in his
company. My tenure at Illinois, over 30 years, was made easier
and more enjoyable and fruitful by Howard and his wife Freda
who helped me and my family in countless ways. As I think
back to the events that brought me in contact with Howard
and his family, I feel very fortunate to have had the privilege
of having had such a mentor and friend.
Petros Sofronis, who was mentored by Howard during his
graduate days and throughout his career, recalled that “every
meeting I had with him turned into an instructive and exciting
tutorial session spanning the disciplines of materials science
and solid mechanics. Howard had no patience for the worn-
out path in scientific research and he encouraged me to push
the boundaries of the field.” This observation was echoed by
the many who were guided and mentored by Howard. He
cherished all of his students and postdocs and enjoyed men-
toring them both professionally and personally.
Howard and Freda Silber married on December 25, 1954,
in Brooklyn. Howard was a perfectionist and expected much
from his family, students, and colleagues, but he was always
fair, even when he disagreed. And although he had a tough
demeanor, he was known by his friends and family to have a
good sense of humor. He loved travelling with his family and
collecting glass, which started as a hobby and was ostensibly
for his children. This interest became a passion that continued
throughout his life and he and Freda built an impressive col-
lection of art glass.
Freda now lives in Dallas. Their eldest daughter, Dr. Elisa
Birnbaum, lives in St. Louis; their son Scott Birnbaum is
in Indianapolis; and their daughter Dr. Shari Birnbaum
is in Dallas. There are six grandchildren: Aaron, Sam, Zach,
and Hannah Zuckerman, and Holly and Alice DeVane.
Howard is also survived by his sister Sybil Licht who lives in
Atlantic Beach, NY.


Wesley Swadley, Creative Photography, San Francisco

JOHN A. BLUME
1909–2002
Elected in 1969
“Pioneering work in the development and application of new design concepts

and analysis of buildings and structures in response to earthquakes.”
BY ANNE KIREMIDJIAN, JAMES GERE, HELMUT

KRAWINKLER, AND HARESH SHAH
J OHN AUGUSTUS BLUME, an early pioneer in earthquake

engineering and a consulting professor of civil and environ-
mental engineering at Stanford University, died at his home in
Hillsborough on March 1, 2002, at the age of 92. His wife Jene
was at his bedside.
John Blume was born April 8, 1909, in Gonzales, California.
He grew up hearing stories from both sets of grandparents
about how they survived the great 1906 earthquake and fire.
His father, Charles A. Blume, was a builder who participated
in the reconstruction of the Palace Hotel and other buildings
in San Francisco after the disaster.
As a young man, Blume worked for his father as a steel erec-
tor and rigger. In 1925 he witnessed the destruction of Santa
Barbara by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that killed 13 people
and severely damaged the majority of commercial buildings.
This experience was the impetus for his career in earthquake
engineering.
Four years after the Santa Barbara earthquake, Blume
enrolled at Stanford to study engineering and created a unique
study plan—a mix of courses in geology, architecture, and
Reprinted with the permission of the John A. Blume Earthquake

Engineering Center, Stanford University.

37

mathematics. He was awarded a BA degree with distinction

in 1933 in civil engineering and an engineering degree in 1934.
While at Stanford, he developed a close rapport with Lydik
Jacobson, who introduced him to the study of structural vibra-
tions and dynamics, which he later applied to the understand-
ing of structural response to earthquake ground motion.
He began his career in engineering with the US Coast and
Geodetic Survey and then joined Chevron Corporation and
Brunnier Engineers of San Francisco. He participated in the
design of oil refineries, buildings, and waterfront and other
structures in the United States and around the world.
In 1945 he started his own company, which grew to
become John A. Blume and Associates. Projects in which he
was involved include buildings and waterfront structures for
ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia, laboratory facilities for Chevron
Research in California, the Stanford Linear Accelerator, the
restoration of the California State Capitol, the Embarcadero
Center Complex including the Hyatt Regency Hotel, the
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, and the Commercial
Port for the government of Guam. In addition to the design of
the Diablo Canyon plant, the firm provided earthquake engi-
neering services to over 70 nuclear power plants in the United
States, Japan, and Europe.
Blume also served as a consultant to the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, and his firm monitored structural
response to the underground nuclear weapons testing at the
Nevada Test Site. In 1971 the company was acquired by URS
Corporation, which operated under the name URS/John
Blume and Associates.
In 1964, at the age of 55, Blume returned to Stanford to
pursue his doctorate. He studied with Donovan Young and
received his PhD degree on January 6, 1967, 33 years to the day
after receiving his bachelor’s degree. His engineering practice
continued to thrive while he was a full-time doctoral student.
John Blume was a strong proponent of earthquake engi-
neering and is considered by many in the profession the
“father of earthquake engineering.” He authored more than
150 papers, articles, and books, and was active in professional

JOHN A. BLUME 39
organizations, helping establish many of them. He was a

founding member and elected fellow of the Earthquake
Engineers Research Institute (EERI) and served as president
of the Structural Engineers Association of Northern California
(SEAONC), Structural Engineers Association of California
(SEAOC), EERI, and the Consulting Engineers Association
of California (CEAC). He led numerous committees in these
organizations and was instrumental in crafting some of the
early earthquake-resistant design guidelines that evolved into
building code regulations. In recognition of his contributions,
the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), SEAOC, and
the New York Academy of Sciences made him an honorary
member.
In addition, he received many awards and honors, includ-
ing ASCE’s Leon S. Moisseiff Award (1953, 1961, and 1969) and
Ernest E. Howard Award (1962), and the Harry Fielding Reid
Medal of the Seismological Society of America (1985). In 1969
he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and
named “Man of the Year” by the Building Industry Conference
Board. He was also an elected fellow of the American Concrete
Institute and the International Association of Earthquake
Engineering.
John Blume demonstrated boundless generosity, and his
love for learning is best described in his own words: “I sin-
cerely believe that the most important thing you have learned
beyond the basic laws of nature, mechanics, and materials is
to teach yourself.” In the mid-1970s, troubled that Stanford,
which once was the leader in structural dynamics research,
did not have an earthquake engineering laboratory—while
Berkeley, Caltech, and Illinois, among others, had major lab-
oratories in this field—he helped establish and endowed the
earthquake engineering center that bears his name. He also
established a graduate fellowship and a chaired professor-
ship in earthquake engineering. Through the years, he took a
keen interest in the progress and growth of the Blume Center,
and worked closely with the faculty and students pursuing
his research interest until Parkinson’s disease prevented him
from being fully active.

Dr. Blume will be remembered for his pioneering research,

remarkable books, and lectures; for establishing a leading struc-
tural engineering design firm; for his generosity to Stanford;
and, to those who were privileged to have known him, for his
warm and charming personality.
He is survived by his wife Jene, sister Beverly, nephew and
nieces, a stepson, and two stepgranddaughters.



S T U A RT W. C H U R C H I L L
1920–2016
Elected in 1974
“Contributions to chemical engineering, specifically

heat transfer and combustion.”
BY WARREN D. SEIDER
STUART WINSTON CHURCHILL, professor emeritus in

the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
at the University of Pennsylvania, passed away March 24,
2016, at age 95. He was born June 13, 1920, in Imlay City,
Michigan, the son of Howard and Faye Churchill.
Dr. Churchill was a force in the fields of combustion, heat
transfer, and fluid dynamics for over 60 years. He conceived
and developed a thermally stabilized burner that resulted in
much quieter and cleaner combustion, greatly reducing the size
of heaters and furnaces. He also invented a heat exchanger/
catalytic reactor that incinerates cigarette smoke, toxic com-
pounds, and microorganisms in living and working spaces.
He was a pioneer in the use of digital computers to solve
engineering problems and in the development of improved
models for representing engineering data during conditions
of turbulent flow and convection. In the mid-1950s, he carried
out light scattering calculations, using one of the first major
programs on the world’s first digital computer, the ENIAC,
which was designed and built at Penn. In addition, he contrib-
uted to nuclear safety, the safe handling of liquefied natural
gas, the space program, and national defense.
He received bachelor’s degrees in both chemical engineer-
ing and mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1942
43

and went to work at Shell Oil Company. There he helped

design, operate, and analyze new processes such as fluidized-
bed catalytic cracking for the production of aviation gasoline
during World War II. At the end of the war he joined a small
startup company, Frontier Chemical, where he helped create
a new process for the manufacture of the important industrial
chemicals hydrochloric acid and caustic soda.
He returned to the University of Michigan in 1947 and
became a member of the faculty after receiving his PhD in
1952. He began teaching as an instructor in 1950 while doing
his doctoral research, was promoted to full professor in 1957,
and chaired the Department of Chemical and Metallurgical
Engineering from 1962 to 1967. He was noted for his math-
ematical approach to teaching transport phenomena, actively
involving his students with instantaneous derivations at the
blackboard.
In parallel, he served as director, vice president, and presi-
dent of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).
He was credited as having reversed the Engineers’ Council for
Professional Development (ECPD) Goals Report recommen-
dations to create the first professional engineering degree as
a five-year master’s degree and to change from specific cur-
ricular accreditation to accreditation of the overall engineer-
ing college. He also served on the Senate Advisory Committee
on University Affairs, and was vice chair (1964–1967) of the
Board of Control of Intercollegiate Athletics at the University
of Michigan.
In 1967 he accepted the Carl V.S. Patterson Scholarly Chair
at the University of Pennsylvania, which permitted him to
focus almost entirely on research and teaching. In 1993 he
earned one of Penn’s first Medals for Distinguished Service.
He also served as a visiting professor at Iowa State University,
the University of Utah, Pennsylvania State University, and
Okayama University in Japan, and was on the advisory com-
mittees of many other institutions.
In addition to his 25 doctoral students at the University of
Michigan, he advised 20 doctoral students at the University
of Pennsylvania. With heavy emphasis on mathematics, often

STUART W. CHURCHILL 45
involving digital computers in their early stages of develop-

ment, every doctoral thesis involved a significant experimen-
tal component.
To augment his teaching and research, he authored sev-
eral textbooks: Interpretation and Use of Rate Data: The Rate
Concept (McGraw-Hill, 1974; revised printing, Hemispheres
Publishing, 1979), The Practical Use of Theory in Fluid Flow:
Inertial Flows (Etaner Press, 1980), and Viscous Flows: The
Practical Use of Theory (Butterworths, 1988).
In recognition of his contributions and achievements,
Dr. Churchill was elected a member of the National Academy
of Engineering in 1974 and in 2002 he won the NAE Founders
Award for “outstanding leadership in research, education,
and professional service, and for continuing contributions in
combustion, heat transfer, and fluid dynamics for over a half
century.” Among his other awards were AIChE’s Professional
Progress Award (1964), William H. Walker Award (1969),
and Warren K. Lewis Award (1978), and the ASME/AIChE
Max Jakob Memorial Award in Heat Transfer (1979). In 1985
the Center for the History of Chemistry (now the Chemical
Heritage Foundation) prepared an oral history on his career.
He formally retired in 1990 but remained active in teaching,
research, and scholarly work. During his professional career,
he authored 215 papers and six books. After retirement he
added more than 110 papers.
Dr. Churchill was honored with a Festschrift on the occasion
of his 90th birthday in the August 2011 issue (vol. 50, no. 15) of
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, a leading archi-
val journal in chemical engineering. The Festschrift noted,
Stuart’s breadth extends far beyond that of most engineer-

ing science researchers. His enthusiasm for design, research
and teaching has increasingly suggested interactions for us
in recent years. Also, for the last 30 years, even in retirement,
Stuart enthusiastically continues to advise one of our senior
design groups. He understands the importance of teaching
students how to translate engineering science principles into
process and product designs that satisfy consumer needs

and to seek designs that optimize profitability in the face of

uncertainty.
A gifted teacher and mentor, Dr. Churchill often mused

that one of the greatest rewards of an academic career was the
opportunity to work and learn with graduate students who
were attracted by the opportunity to work on problems of obvi-
ous importance to society, and who were willing to share the
risks of exploratory research and accept the burden of carrying
out both numerical and experimental work. He received the
S. Reid Warren Jr. Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1978.
Through decades of scholarly mentorship of colleagues
and students, Dr. Churchill brought distinction to the
University of Pennsylvania and its Department of Chemical
and Biomolecular Engineering and to the University of
Michigan and its Department of Chemical and Metallurgical
Engineering. In 2008 the AIChE designated him one of the 100
most distinguished chemical engineers of the modern era. His
accomplishments have been far reaching and have changed
the way average Americans live.
In addition to his great love of science and technology, all
encounters with Dr. Churchill exposed his comparable love
of music, art, literature, nature, gardening, long walks (and
runs), travel, fine food and wine, health, fitness, tennis, skiing,
and intercollegiate athletics—as well as political discourse.
Dr. Churchill is survived by his wife of 41 years, Renate;
his brother James Paul Churchill; children Stuart Lewis
Churchill, Diana Zajic, Catherine Fraser, and Emily Sanders;
grandchildren Lara Zajic Barron and Stefan Zajic, Madeline
and Sylvia Fraser, Elizabeth and Zachary Sanders; and great-
grandchildren Tomas and Halina Zajic.


Louis Fabian Bachrach

WESLEY A. CLARK
1927–2016
Elected in 1999
“For the design of early computers.”
BY IVAN E. SUTHERLAND, MARY ALLEN WILKES,

SEVERO M. ORNSTEIN, AND JEROME R. COX
W ESLEY ALLISON CLARK passed away at his home in

Brooklyn, New York, on February 22, 2016, at age 88. He was
a pioneering architect of several revolutionary computers in
the 1950s and 1960s, all motivated by his early, and at the time
heretical, conviction that computers should be designed to
enhance the productivity of the user, not the efficiency of the
machine.
Long before the word “ergonomic” came into popular use,
Clark’s computers were outstandingly well human-engineered
and thus highly interactive. They include the first computer
with a ferrite-core memory (the Memory Test Computer), the
first all-transistorized computer (the TX-0), the first computer
with a million-bit memory (the TX-2), and the LINC (labora-
tory instrument computer), widely recognized as the world’s
first personal computer, the great-granddaddy of all the per-
sonal devices in use today.
The revolutionary nature of Clark’s work is best under-
stood by recalling the computing environment of the 1950s.
Computers were then so massive and expensive that maxi-
mizing their efficiency was the paramount goal. The ortho-
dox view therefore was that a computer had to be shared by
multiple individuals. Initially this took the form of sequential
sharing through batch processing via decks of punched cards,
49

but by the late 1950s people were exploring time-sharing that

promised multiple users “simultaneous” interactive access.
However, interactivity was limited both by the access mecha-
nism (typically teletype-like terminals) and by the fact that the
increasing number of users quickly swamped the capacity of
even the most powerful machines.
Defying the time-sharing orthodoxy, and influenced by
his early 1950s experience with MIT’s Whirlwind computer
(where single users were given long periods of complete
access to and control over the computer), Clark became con-
vinced that complete individual “ownership” was vital.
He also recognized the power of graphical interaction with
the computer. Thus, in the mid-1950s he designed the TX-2 at
MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory with a light pen and large d isplay—
and, although it was the most powerful computer in the world
at the time, he insisted that it be dedicated to individual users.
He resisted attempts to time-share it, ruffling some feathers at
MIT in the process, and instead, despite the cost, made sure that
an individual could take complete control of the computer for
extended periods. His philosophy permitted Ivan Sutherland,
for example, to develop Sketchpad, thereby laying the foun-
dation for today’s computer graphics. Years later Clark told
Sutherland, “You know, I designed the TX-2 just for you. I just
didn’t know who you were at the time.”
By the early 1960s Clark recognized that hardware size and
costs were about to shrink dramatically, further facilitating
individual ownership. He foresaw, at least a decade before
anyone else, that computers would become personal devices
with which one would interact through graphical means.
He had also spent some time in the early 1950s working
with Belmont Farley on the use of computers to simulate
neural activity of the brain. By the early 1960s he had devel-
oped a deep appreciation for how a real-time, interactive
computer in the hands of a single researcher could advance
biomedical research. In 1961 he addressed the first symposium
of the Brain Research Institute with these words:

WESLEY A. CLARK 51
Ideally the researcher would have the general-purpose com-

puter in his laboratory for use “on-line,” enabling him to
observe and act on the basis of the calculated results while the
experiment is in progress.
By 1962 this vision had become the LINC.

Before the LINC, for medical researchers to use the analytical
power of a computer, they first had to reduce experimental
data to a stack of punched cards that were transported to
the computer center for processing behind closed doors by a
“computer operator.” It took hours, even days, to get results.
It was not possible to interact with an experiment in real time
or watch it in process on a display.
With the LINC, the computer moved into the laboratory as
an instrument that could be integrated directly with an ongo-
ing experiment. It was developed under Clark’s leadership at
MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and first used in a research experi-
ment in April 1962 to analyze a cat’s real-time neural responses
at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda,
Maryland. It created a sensation. Robert Livingston, scientific
director of the NIMH, said later, “It was such a triumph that
we danced a jig right there around the equipment. No human
being had ever been able to see what we had just witnessed.
It was as if we had an opportunity to ski down a virgin snow
field of a previously undiscovered mountain.”
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) quickly embraced
this development by funding the LINC Evaluation Program,
which placed LINCs in a dozen selected biomedical research
laboratories around the country in the summer of 1963. Within
two years the LINC had revolutionized biomedical research.
Faculty at the University of Wisconsin, where one of the
LINCs was placed, said in 2003, “Not only did it speed up
data analysis by more than two orders of magnitude, but it
also provided rapid, ‘on-line’ feedback of processed output
that enabled hitherto impossible experiments to be carried
out.” The recipient of that LINC, neurophysiologist Joe Hind,
went on to establish in 1965 a Laboratory Computer Facility at
the university, making laboratory computers available to all in

the Medical School. In so doing, he contradicted the univer-

sity’s policy that the university’s main computer could handle
all of the campus’s computing chores even though it required
carrying punch-card programs and specially processed data
tapes to the Computing Center.
The LINC demonstrated that a small computer could exist
with sufficient harmony and integrity to be a productive tool
in the hands of a single person. It was the first of what came
to be known as “minicomputers” (at that time the term “per-
sonal computer” was not much used), and it heavily influ-
enced the design of subsequent DEC machines, including the
PDP-4 and PDP-5, the direct forerunner of DEC’s highly suc-
cessful PDP-8.
Of course, the LINC was huge by today’s personal com-
puter standards: the electronics alone, all transistor logic, occu-
pied a refrigerator-sized cabinet. Clark was fond of pointing
out, swiping his hand like a paintbrush in the direction of the
LINC, that “someday you’ll be able to just paint all this on any
handy flat surface.” He believed that computers should be fun
to use, and his were. He was a great admirer of the Honeywell-
Emett Forget-Me-Not Computer, an engaging monument to
invention and whimsy.
Clark’s courage in bucking the centralized computing and
time-sharing orthodoxy of the day was risky. It put him at
odds with MIT’s governing policies on more than one occa-
sion and led to his parting ways with the institute. Although
he had obtained a $30 million commitment from NIH, the larg-
est grant it had ever awarded, to establish an interuniversity
Center for Computer Research in the Biomedical Sciences, he
and MIT disagreed over how the center was to be run and in
1964 Clark declined the grant and left MIT. He would often say
in later years that he had had the distinction of being the only
person in the world to have been fired from MIT for insubor-
dination three times.
Clark and his team found a welcome home at Washington
University in St. Louis, where he was appointed Research
Professor of Computer Science and, with new funding
from NIH, founded the Computer Systems Laboratory and

WESLEY A. CLARK 53
continued the LINC Evaluation Program. He led the design

of “macromodules,” computer building blocks that spurred
interest in asynchronous logic.
He made a crucial contribution to the design of the Arpanet,
forerunner of the Internet. Interconnecting different models of
computers in a network was a formidable problem. Clark sug-
gested that a “small computer” be installed at each site that
wanted access to the Net, with the small computers all inter-
connected and each site then needing to cope with just the one
interface to its own small computer. This “small computer,”
now called a router, became, and remains, a central part of the
design of the Internet.
The fact that Clark was able to make such a significant
move to a different state, and have the core of his team join
him, was remarkable and attests to people’s dedication to him
and his vision. He was an enabler and quiet mentor to all who
worked with him. He was witty and engaging, humble, char-
ismatic, and compassionate, and everyone who worked with
him became a lifelong and loyal friend. One of his colleagues
at Washington University, Warren Littlefield, captured the
experience:
Wesley opened a door for me to adventure and discovery. By

inviting me into his magical kingdom I enjoyed the great good
fortune of playing a small but exhilarating part in the evolu-
tion of computing. . . . Every day in the Computer Systems Lab
was an exciting day. . . . You quickly became convinced that the
center of the computing universe lay, at least while [Wesley]
was there, in St. Louis, Mo.
He was active outside the laboratory too. He was a national

lecturer for the ACM (1966) and a lecturer in the IEEE
Distinguished Visitor Program. Three of his engaging presen-
tations are available on YouTube. In 1972 he was one of six
computer scientists invited to visit and lecture in China for
18 days as guests of the Chinese government. They were the
first American scientists to visit China in nearly 20 years. He
authored or coauthored over 25 publications.

For his extraordinary contributions, he received the ACM-

IEEE Computer Society Eckert-Mauchly Award for Computer
Architecture in 1981, and in the same year was a charter recipi-
ent of the IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award
for the “First Personal Computer.” He was awarded an hon-
orary DSc by Washington University in 1984 and elected to
the National Academy of Engineering in 1999. In 1977–1978
he was the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the
California Institute of Technology.
He served on the National Academy of Sciences’ Computer
Science and Engineering Board (1968–1971) and its Committee
on the Use of Computers in the Life Sciences (1961–1973) as
well as the NAS Committee on Scholarly Communication
with the People’s Republic of China (1974–1976).
Clark was born in New Haven on April 10, 1927. He
attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he
received a degree in physics in 1947 and pursued graduate
studies, which included two years with the Nuclear Reactor
Dynamics Group at Hanford, Washington.
In his spare time he taught himself Chinese, built a working
Turing machine (which he dubbed “The Only Working Turing
Machine There Ever Was, Probably,” or “TOWTMTEWP”),
and designed and built lovely things such as an elegant aviary
that harbored several pairs of finches and graced his home in
St. Louis for many years.
He is survived by his wife, Maxine L. Rockoff; sons Douglas,
Brian, and Peter and daughter Alison Eleanor Clark; a sister,
Joan Murphy; and five grandchildren.


Gabriel Moulin Portraiture, San Francisco

WILLIAM A. CLEVENGER
1919–2009
Elected in 1990
“For exceptional contributions in geotechnical engineering,

management, and service to the profession.”
BY RUDOLPH BONAPARTE
WILLIAM ALBERT CLEVENGER, an eminent geotechnical

engineer and expert on the design of earth and rockfill embank-
ment dams, died July 9, 2009, at the age of 89 in Coeur d’Alene,
Idaho.
Bill was born in Wheatland, Wyoming, on September 12,
1919, the eldest of three children. He received his BS degree
in civil engineering from the University of Wyoming in 1943
and joined the US Army Corps of Engineers as a supervisor in
its Soil Mechanics School. He saw active duty during World
War II and rose to the rank of lieutenant. While in the service,
he met and married Janet (Jan) Tucker of Spokane, Washington.
From 1946 to 1956 he worked first as a materials engineer
(soil mechanics) and then as head of the Soil Properties Section
for the US Bureau of Reclamation in Denver. During his tenure
at the bureau, he undertook advanced studies in irrigation
engineering in 1947–1948 at Colorado State University in Fort
Collins. He also gained substantial experience in the geotech-
nical engineering aspects of the design of dams, reservoirs,
and related water management structures.
He joined the geotechnical engineering firm Woodward-
Clyde Consultants (WCC) in 1956 and immediately became
the principal in charge of its Denver office. He stayed with
WCC for 28 years, and from 1973 to 1980 chaired the WCC
57

board. After his semiretirement in 1984 he continued to take

on occasional assignments as an independent consultant on
dam projects.
His professional practice at both the Bureau of Reclamation
and WCC centered on the investigation, design, and construc-
tion of earth and rockfill dams. Based on his experience and
expertise he coauthored (with James L. Sherard, Richard J.
Woodward, and Stanley F. Gizienski) the 1963 landmark book
on the topic, Earth and Earth-Rock Dams: Engineering Problems
of Design and Construction (John Wiley and Sons), as well as
nearly 20 technical papers. He also served on the National
Research Council Committee on the Safety of Dams, which
authored the 1977 report A Review of the Programs of the US
Bureau of Reclamation for the Safety of Existing Dams.
During his career Bill consulted on some 500 dam p rojects
in the United States and more than 20 other countries. These
projects include, to name just a few, the Teton Dam (Idaho);
Grayrocks Dam (Wyoming); Martin Dam (Florida); Merrill
Creek Dam (New Jersey); Oroville and San Luis Dams
(California); Tarbela Dam (Pakistan); Narrows, Dillon, and
Valmont Dams (Colorado); and Wolf Creek Dam (Tennessee).
He was a keenly insightful and intuitive engineer, always
bringing smart ideas and sound judgment to the table. He was
highly sought after as a consultant, by public and private dam
owners, architect/engineer firms involved in dam design,
and contractors involved in dam construction. He served
on numerous dam safety review teams and boards, and was
involved in a number of root cause investigations of dam
failures.
In addition to dams, Bill’s consulting practice extended to
fossil and nuclear power plants, industrial facilities, highways
and airfields, and irrigation facilities. Representative of his
international experience were projects in Argentina, Canada,
China, Greece, Iceland, Peru, Spain, Thailand, and Venezuela.
His long history of exemplary service to the profession
included numerous national offices and many technical and
professional committees. He was president of the Consulting
Engineers Council of Colorado; vice president, senior vice

WILLIAM A. CLEVENGER 59
president, and president of the American Consulting Engineers

Council (ACEC) and chair of its Public Relations and Business
Development Committees; and president of the Colorado
Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Other committee memberships included the ACEC Civil
Works Committee and ASCE Committee on Embankment
Dams and Slopes. He was a director for the US Committee on
Large Dams and a member of the US National Committee of
the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage. As
ACEC president, he served on the Interprofessional Council
on Environmental Design (ICED), the Legislative Advisory
Committee, and the National Council of Professional Service
Firms. He was a registered professional engineer in California,
Colorado, New Mexico, Washington, and Wyoming.
He was recognized for his achievements and contributions
with a Distinguished Service Award from the Consulting
Engineers Council of California and a Superior Service Award
from the US Bureau of Reclamation. He was named the
Woodward Lecturer by WCC and a member of the University
of Wyoming Alumni Hall of Fame. In addition to his election
to the NAE, he was inducted into the Sigma Tau engineering
honor society (which subsequently merged into Tau Beta Pi).
After retiring from WCC, Bill and Jan moved to Sequim,
Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, where they enjoyed
golf and Bill loved to fish. He delighted in visits from old
friends and colleagues and the chance to share time fishing
with his guests. He and Jan also stayed active in the lives of
their four grown children and their families.
Jan passed away on March 11, 2012, in Coeur d’Alene, at
the age of 92. They are survived by sons William, Thomas,
and Patrick, daughter Martha, 11 grandchildren, and 14
great-grandchildren.


THOMAS B. COOK, JR.

1926–2013
Elected in 1981
“Outstanding contributions to the understanding of nuclear weapons

effects and to the design of weapons to penetrate nuclear defenses.”
BY JOHN C. CRAWFORD
THOMAS B. COOK, JR. passed away at his home in

Pleasanton, California, December 27, 2013, at the age of 87.
Tom was born August 28, 1926, in Rich Pond, Kentucky, the
son of Willie Ethel and Thomas B. Cook, Sr. He graduated from
Bowling Green High School in 1943, from Western Kentucky
State University in 1947 with a bachelor of science in physics
and mathematics, and from Vanderbilt University in 1951 with
a master’s and PhD in physics. In 1944–1946 he also served in
the Navy.
He was hired by Sandia National Laboratories in 1951 as a
member of the technical staff (MTS). He spent his entire career
with Sandia, yet the impact of his leadership and expertise
was felt well beyond Sandia in the broad areas of science and
national security.
In 1951 Sandia was entering a transition period as its focus
changed from nuclear weapon production to the engineering
and development of nuclear weapons. Sandia recognized that,
to be a competent engineering laboratory, it must develop a
sound research base from which to work. Tom was among the
first PhDs—and at age 24 the youngest—at Sandia, and thus
was at the forefront of this major transition of the laboratory’s
focus from production to science and engineering.
61

His technical expertise and management skills were clearly

recognized as he quickly assumed increasing responsibili-
ties. He was promoted from MTS to section supervisor in
1955, division supervisor in 1956, and manager of the Nuclear
Burst Physics Department in 1959. He was appointed direc-
tor of physics and mathematics in 1962, and vice president of
research in 1967. A year later he was asked to move to California
to assume the leadership of Sandia’s Livermore Laboratory, a
position he held for the next 14 years. He returned to Sandia’s
Albuquerque location in 1982 as executive vice president and
retired in 1986.
Tom’s early work focused on understanding the atmospheric
environments created during a nuclear explosion. He and col-
laborator Carter Broyles analyzed atmospheric nuclear burst
effects up to altitudes of 100,000 feet, which was quite extra
ordinary since in those days (the 1950s) 30,000 feet was con-
sidered high altitude. (Of course, the Space Age changed that
perception dramatically.)
The results were documented in a classified report that
defined nuclear burst effects from ground level to 100,000 feet.
It was widely used and became known by those in the field
as the “Cook Book.” The work became increasingly impor-
tant as Sandia took on the design and manufacture of micro
electronics that were tolerant of these nuclear environments, a
unique area of expertise that continues to this day at Sandia.
Given his expertise in nuclear explosion effects, Tom subse-
quently chaired an Air Force Scientific Advisory Task Group
that first delineated the problem of gamma-ray transients and
their effect on military electronics systems. This concern led to
the recognition that the nation needed experimental facilities
to simulate the effects of nuclear explosions, so that military
systems could be designed for survivability in a nuclear envi-
ronment. Simulation facilities were built by several technical
organizations, including Sandia, and some of them still oper-
ate and provide data for nuclear survivability. Recognition of
the transient radiation problem also accelerated the nation’s
(and Sandia’s) interest in developing microelectronics tolerant
of radiation effects.

THOMAS B. COOK, JR. 63
In the late 1960s Tom was deeply involved with the US

Navy program to develop a new option for deploying nuclear
weapons on a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM).
The original Polaris SLBM carried a single nuclear warhead
on each missile, but with miniaturization and integration of
components it was deemed possible to sufficiently reduce the
size and weight that multiple warheads might be carried on a
single missile, hence the original code name “Pebbles.”
Sandia’s job was to miniaturize all the arming, firing, and
fuzing components and to integrate them with the Lawrence
Livermore–designed nuclear package into a small, Navy-
supplied reentry body. This required an unprecedented
degree of component and system integration. As vice presi-
dent for research, and subsequently as vice president of Sandia
Livermore, Tom was instrumental in applying all of Sandia’s
new technologies in a tightly focused development program
that was tremendously successful. The Poseidon SLBM was
deployed in 1972, each missile carrying 10 nuclear warheads.
The SLBM program was (and still is) under the direc-
tion of the Navy’s Strategic Systems Program Office (SSPO).
RADM Robert H. Wertheim was the technical director and
subsequently director of the SSPO during this time of intense
development of the multiple warhead capability. He recalls his
interactions with Sandia and with Tom:
As a key scientist and manager at Sandia, Tom Cook played an

invaluable leadership role during the early development and
subsequent evolution of the US Navy’s s ubmarine-launched
Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) system. Our Navy program office
design strategy called for minimizing the payload weight for
the new small missile by integrating the DOE nuclear warhead
and the DoD reentry vehicle structures. This called for unprec-
edented organizational interfaces and cooperation among the
program participants, and was notably provided by Tom and
his Sandia teammates. In later more advanced missile models
the Navy SP has chosen to extend the integration concept fur-
ther, and contracts directly with Sandia for development and
support of the fuzing subsystems. Tom was named a member
of the Strategic Programs Steering Task Group serving the

SSPO director. He was not only a valued colleague but also a

close personal friend.
Tom’s influence and contributions extended well beyond

the area of national security. In the early 1970s he challenged
his people at Sandia Livermore for bold new ways that Sandia
could provide technologies that would help solve some of
the nation’s growing energy problems. Out of these discus-
sions emerged the highly successful Combustion Research
Facility (CRF) located on the Sandia Livermore campus. Dan
L. Hartley, first director of the CRF, recalls Tom’s leadership in
establishing the program:
Tom Cook had come to Sandia Livermore to raise the level of

scientific capability and research contributions from the site. I
was a great recipient of that effort. As one of the first PhDs in
the new wave of his hires there, it was clear from Tom Cook’s
messages that we were to be bolder in our thinking about
what we were doing. As the energy crisis hit, and all the AEC/
ERDA/DOE labs were asked to come up with ideas to help,
Tom challenged us to come up with big ideas. My research was
relatively novel (measuring gas flow concentrations in milli-
seconds with Raman spectroscopy—a new technique) and
Tom had funded my projects handsomely. I proposed to use
that technique to measure combustion processes, a key tech-
nology in nearly every energy process. I’ll never forget pre-
senting my 10-person proposal to him to try my methods in
the energy sector, when he responded “Dan, I want you to go
for the whole enchilada!” Back to the drawing boards, emerg-
ing with a proposal for the National Center for Combustion
Research (the name changed many times). I was new to the
Washington scene, and our proposal required me to deal with
several parts of ERDA and Tom opened the doors for me. He
never stole the show, but let me grow in that role.
Throughout his career, Tom was a leader in establishing a

world-class research team at Sandia. He clearly recognized the
strength of engineering with a solid scientific research base. As
vice president for research and then as vice president of Sandia
Livermore he was at the forefront of Sandia’s efforts to recruit

THOMAS B. COOK, JR. 65
and develop the appropriate staff. He had a talent for attract-

ing and developing outstanding scientists and engineers, and
this was particularly apparent with his move to California.
People respected Tom for the example he set and the dedi-
cation to national service he displayed on a daily basis. Miriam
E. (Mim) John was one of those who began her career under
his guidance and support. Her career at Sandia had many
dimensions, but she advanced to follow in Tom’s footsteps
(after a few years) as vice president of Sandia’s California Lab.
She had this recollection of Tom and his impact:
Tom represented everything that has always been the best of

what Sandia stands for. He lived the lab’s motto of “exceptional
service in the national interest.” His technical accomplish-
ments were instrumental in establishing the nation’s defense
strategy, so much so that his peers recognized him with elec-
tion to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the high-
est honors in the nation’s science and technology community.
He was a pioneer in diversity, hiring and nurturing technical
women and minorities at Sandia in the 60s and 70s well before
other organizations. He also recognized in the 70s the need
for Sandia/California to expand its portfolio of programs.
A very visible and enduring testament to his foresight is the
internationally respected Combustion Research Facility, which
he effectively defended in its startup phase from both internal
and external challengers while the technical team got it off the
ground.
Tom was selected in 1971 to receive the prestigious E.O.

Lawrence Award, given by the Atomic Energy Commission
to recognize meritorious contributions in the field of atomic
energy. His citation read as follows: “For his significant contri-
butions to the study of nuclear weapon effects, for his original
work in the translation of this knowledge into advanced tech-
nology for peaceful and military uses of atomic energy, and
for his outstanding contributions to the nation through his ser-
vice as an advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission and the
Department of Defense on the effects of nuclear detonations.”
In 1981 Tom was elected to the National Academy of

Engineering and in 1986 he received the DOE Distinguished

Associate Award in recognition of “his outstanding con-
tributions to the Department of Energy’s national security
and energy missions. As Executive Vice President of Sandia
Corporation, his management skills, initiative, and dedication
have resulted in significant benefits to the nation’s defense
and energy well-being.” In 1996 he was recognized by Western
Kentucky University with its Distinguished Alumni Award.
In addition to these awards, Tom served on many boards
and advisory groups; among them were the Defense Science
Board Task Force on Vulnerability (chair), Air Force Scientific
Advisory Board, Scientific Advisory Group of the Joint
Strategic Target Planning Staff, DoD Scientific Advisory Group
on Effects, Steering Task Group for the US Navy Strategic
Projects Office, and Air Force Penetration Program Panel.
Throughout his long and productive career as a scientist
and engineer, Tom Cook retained his focus on service to the
nation. He had the foresight to anticipate problems, he had
a talent for attracting outstanding people and nurturing their
careers to help solve these problems, and he was extraordi-
narily successful at collaborative efforts across major organi-
zational interfaces. He was an outstanding scientist in his own
right, but his impact was even greater because of his unique
ability to work with and through other individuals and orga-
nizations to achieve major shared goals. He was a true leader.
He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Virginia Preston Cook,
and their two children, Dr. Thomas B. Cook III of Princeton,
and Shelley I. Cook of Pleasanton.



J . B A R RY C O O K E
1915–2005
Elected in 1979
“Contributions to the design and construction of

rockfill dams and related hydro projects.”
BY NELSON L. DE S. PINTO
J AMES BARRY COOKE was born in London on April 28, 1915.

His early education was in English schools until, when he was
10 years old, the Cooke family emigrated to the United States
in 1926 and settled in the Los Angeles area. He completed high
school there in 1935 and, after a year at Pasadena Junior College,
enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, in September
1936. He graduated in June 1939 with a bachelor’s degree in
engineering and immediately obtained employment as a junior
engineer in the Engineering Department of Pacific Gas and
Electric Company in San Francisco.
His employment was interrupted in 1942–1946 for service in
World War II as an engineer officer in the Corps of Engineers,
where he attained the rank of major. He served two years on
invasion planning and 1½ years in France and Germany on mil-
itary bridges in connection with the Rhine River Crossing and
the Remagen Bridge episode. For these he was awarded the
Bronze Star Medal.
In 1947 he resumed employment with Pacific Gas and
Electric and became involved in the engineering of 18 new
hydro developments and the operating problems of 70 exist-
ing projects. He served concurrently as an associated consul-
tant, with his supervisor, I.C. Steele (vice president and chief
69

engineer), on plans and specifications for some 15 American

and foreign hydro projects.
In his activities with PG&E, which involved work on 110
dam projects and more than 200 km of tunnels, Barry devel-
oped an increasing interest in the design, construction, and
performance of dams, with special attention to concrete face
rockfill dams (CFRD).
His contribution to the 1958 ASCE Symposium on Rockfill
Dams, in Portland, Oregon, as chair of the committee, illus-
trates his early commitment to this type of dam. He was
influential in inducing ASCE to print the conference proceed-
ings as Part II of the Transactions of ASCE, vol. 125 (1960) that
became a state-of-the-art reference on rockfill dams at the
time. Publishing on technical issues and spreading his expe-
rience amply among friends and clients became one of his
trademarks.
Inspired by his many technical activities and achieve-
ments, Barry took early retirement from PG&E in 1961 to
begin an independent consulting practice at the age of 46. He
worked uninterruptedly until 2004, when his then frail health
demanded a halt. He remained interested in news on CFRDs
to the end.
During his lengthy career Barry was involved in 100 dam
projects in more than 20 countries. His national and inter-
national assignments on major projects required extensive
long-distance air travel—several hundred thousand miles
annually—which he did without complaint. On the contrary,
he exhibited an ever present professional enthusiasm. His
intense consulting activity was instrumental in the develop-
ment of CFRD design and its worldwide acceptance as a valid
and competitive type of dam.
China in particular was the country where CFRDs enjoyed
the greatest acceptance. Not by coincidence, the J. Barry Cooke
Volume: Concrete Face Rockfill Dams (Chinese Committee on
Large Dams, 2000), organized by a group of Brazilian engi-
neers, was published for distribution at the International
Symposium on Concrete Face Rockfill Dams and 20th

J. BARRY COOKE 71
International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) Congress

in Beijing.1
I first met Barry, then chief engineer of PG&E, in November
1959 when, as a fresh MS in hydraulics from the University
of Iowa, I came looking for some dam projects to visit. The
Wishon and Courtright CFRDs had just been finished and he
personally authorized the visit, without missing the opportu-
nity to highlight for his junior visitor the advantageous prop-
erties of that type of dam. Neither of us could have imagined
how much and how closely we would cooperate in the future
on several CFRD projects.
We first worked together on the board of consultants for
the 160-meter-high Foz do Areia CFRD in Brazil (1975–1980),
a benchmark in the development of that type of dam, as the
highest and largest in the world at the time. Most importantly,
it was also the first of this type of dam to hold a permanent
reservoir. Its excellent performance was decisive to the accep-
tance of the CFRD as a first-class dam type for consideration
in projects all over the world.
Barry’s enthusiasm about the favorable characteristics of
“his” dam—“CFRD dams are inherently safe…” was one of his
favorite sentences—induced him to sponsor the Proceedings
of the ASCE Symposium on Concrete Face Rockfill Dams: Design,
Construction, and Performance in 1985, a publication that became
known among dam engineers as “The Green Book.” A second
symposium followed under his leadership in Florianópolis in
Brazil, in 1999, to register the evolution of the design and con-
struction practice.
In 2007 the Brazilian engineers organized a third sympo-
sium, again in Florianópolis, this one in Barry’s honor, to
update the evolution of CFRDs and in “recognition of his
unique role as the main developer of CFRDs throughout the
world, and as an homage for his positive contribution to dam
engineering in Brazil.”
The introduction to the book, by Thomas M. Leps, a close friend of

1
Barry, was my main reference for this memoir.

Among other professional honors were the Distinguished

Engineering Alumnus Award from the University of California,
Berkeley (1993) and his selection as Karl Terzaghi Lecturer for
the 1982 ASCE annual meeting.
Barry was a special class of American engineer who, having
experienced the pressure of war engineering at the start of
his career, brought to his professional life the no-nonsense
approach and honesty required for good engineering of large
hydro projects. In addition, by his character, he left an example
of competent and ethical behavior that continues to inspire the
engineering community in many countries worldwide.
He died April 21, 2005, at the age of 89.
His daughter Bonnie remembers
My father, besides being a brilliant engineer, was a kind, loving,

and generous man to family and friends throughout the world.
His generosity was unbounded. When he found out that his
secretary’s daughter had been accepted to a university but did
not have the funds to attend, he sponsored her until she got
her degree. The care and comfort he gave to his brother, suffer-
ing through the rigors of Alzheimer’s, was also characteristic
of his compassionate side. Such empathy was second nature
to him.
He stayed as fit physically as he did mentally by a daily
regime (when possible) of lap swimming and frequent tennis
matches with his wife (she never let him win but he never
quit trying!). In his college days and again in his later years he
enjoyed sailing on the San Francisco Bay. He also loved to hike,
and whoever was lucky enough to join him learned a lot about
the soil composition they were standing on and the rocks they
saw. But it was the love of all things dam related—from his
starving student days at Cal to literally his last days—that was
the driving force of his life. There was hardly ever a dinner
conversation that he didn’t finagle a way to discuss his latest
project. And somehow he made these descriptions interesting
to all nonengineering guests present.
He will be missed as much for the man he was as for his

towering engineering accomplishments.



ALAN COTTRELL
1919–2012
Elected in 1976
“Contributions to science and technology of materials in engineering structures

and applications of engineering science to major societal problems.”
BY PETER B. HIRSCH
A LAN HOWARD COTTRELL died February 15, 2012, at the

age of 92. Over a period of some 70 years the impacts of his
work on the basic understanding of materials and its applica-
tion to engineering structures, his academic leadership, his role
as scientific advisor to the British government, and his contribu-
tions to safe nuclear energy were all immense.
Sir Alan was born in Birmingham (UK) on July 17, 1919, the
elder son of Albert and Elizabeth Cottrell. He attended Moseley
Grammar School and then read metallurgy at Birmingham
University, graduating in 1939. He was put on war work and
introduced to the serious problem of the cracking of tanks’
armor plating at electric arc welds, which he solved. This early
experience no doubt influenced his lifelong interest in fracture
and structural integrity.
He was made lecturer at Birmingham in 1943 and in 1944
married Jean Elizabeth Harber, a marriage that lasted happily
for 55 years. They had one son, Geoffrey, in 1951, and much
later adopted a daughter, Ioana. It is said that one of Alan’s
classic books, Dislocations and Plastic Flow in Metals, published
More details can be found in the Royal Society’s Biographical Memoirs

(vol. 59, 2013) and in a 2013 special issue of the Philosophical Magazine
(93:3695–3938) in honor of Sir Alan Cottrell.
75

in 1953 (Clarendon Press), was written during sleepless nights

with baby Geoffrey.
Toward the end of the war Alan prepared a new lecture
course, “Theoretical Structural Metallurgy” (which formed
the basis of another classic book he wrote at this time), in
which he discussed the structure and properties of metals
in terms of the behavior of constituent atoms and electrons.
The course was very influential and ahead of its time. It con-
tributed greatly to transforming a hitherto rather qualitative
subject into a quantitative discipline and was an important
step in achieving his ambition to transform metallurgy into
materials science. He was a brilliant lecturer, conveying com-
plex phenomena in simple terms.
After the war Alan started research on the plastic properties
of metals, with a view to establishing the role of crystal line
defects, called dislocations, in determining mechanical prop-
erties. The yield point of structural steel was of major interest,
and he explained it in terms of the interaction of interstitial
carbon and nitrogen atoms with the dislocations (Cottrell
locking). There followed explanations of the yield drop, strain
aging, the role of grain boundaries, blue brittleness of iron, the
temperature dependence of the yield stress in steels, and pin-
ning effects in face-centered cubic crystals.
There were also seminal contributions in other areas. In a
series of elegant temperature cycling experiments, with Robert
Stokes on aluminum and M.A. Adams on copper, he showed
that the relatively small temperature-dependent part of the flow
stress is proportional to the main temperature-independent
part (the Cottrell-Stokes Law), which was explained in terms
of dislocations cutting through other dislocations. This led to
the “forest” model of flow stress. This is without doubt one of
the most important contributions to understanding of work
hardening and stimulated much further research.
In addition, he explained Robert Cahn’s experiments on the
recovery of bent crystals of zinc by the process of “polygoniza-
tion” and introduced a new mechanism, the Lomer-Cottrell
lock, whereby a dislocation formed by the interaction of two dis-
locations at the intersection of two slip planes in face-centered

ALAN COTTRELL 77
cubic crystals would transform into a strong barrier to further

slip. He was also interested in the interaction of point defects
with dislocations, and, with Robert Maddin, carried out semi-
nal experiments on quench hardening of aluminum.
These and other investigations were all pioneering studies
carried out over a period of just ten years. They are an impres-
sive achievement and remarkable for their physical insight
and lasting impact, and for showing the way critical experi-
ments should be carried out. Alan’s contributions in this field
are second to none.
His work contributed much to making the Birmingham
Department famous as a leading center for the science of
metals. He was given a personal professorship in 1949 at the
age of 30, and in 1955 was elected to the Royal Society at
the early age of 35.
That year he also accepted the post of deputy head of the
Metallurgy Division at the UK Atomic Energy Establishment
at Harwell, because he expected to find problems there of
national importance that were in his field. His aim was to
advance the understanding of radiation damage relevant
to the development of nuclear power reactors.
Radiation damage in uranium rods, in the graphite core in
Magnox civil nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom, was
of particular concern. Swelling and growth of uranium were
studied and in a brilliantly designed experiment Cottrell, with
A.C. Roberts, showed that creep under neutron irradiation
would produce a large buckle in the fuel rod within a few
weeks. This led to a redesign of the fuel rods in the reactors.
Another area studied was the radiation embrittlement of
structural steels, resulting in a rise of the brittle-ductile transi-
tion temperature. This work has a direct bearing on the integ-
rity of pressure vessels in pressurized water reactors of current
design as well as in the older Magnox reactors in the United
Kingdom. In addition, Cottrell wrote a review article in 1956
on the effects of neutron irradiation on metals and alloys,
which was very influential at the time.
These studies led him to consider the problem of brit-
tle cleavage of steels. Experimental evidence showed that

cleavage cracks were nucleated by plastic deformation. In a

famous paper in 1958 he described an ingenious mechanism
for reducing elastic energy by the coalescence of dislocations
on intersecting slip planes for the nucleation of cleavage cracks
on cube planes in the body-centered cubic lattice. The difficult
step in brittle fracture was therefore the propagation of the
crack nuclei across the grains. This led to the identification of
refinement of grain size as the important factor in increasing
not only yield strength (as recognized by Norman J. Petch) but
also toughness. This fact plays an important role in the devel-
opment of modern steels.
On October 10, 1957, a reactor at Windscale caught fire
during a gentle heating to anneal damage due to displaced
carbon atoms in the graphite core—the Wigner energy released
in this process heated up the graphite so much that it caught
fire. For this national emergency Cottrell set up a laboratory
in a few weeks and, with his team, unravelled the problem
and was able to give assurance that the UK Magnox reactors
would be immune to this self-heating effect.
In 1958 Alan accepted an invitation to become head of the
Department of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. He
modernized the department by bringing in new people and
new equipment and by teaching the subject from the atomic
point of view. Since 1965 the subject has included both metal-
lurgy and materials science. The new structure has stood the
test of time.
Alan also started two new research projects, on field-ion
microscopy and on superconducting alloys, which he predicted
correctly to become an important growth area in materials sci-
ence. His research focused on (1) brittle fracture of structural
steel at freezing temperatures, responsible for many tragic
accidents to ships and bridges, and (2), with Anthony Kelly,
the physics of fibrous composites, which although made from
brittle materials could be very strong and resistant to fracture.
These studies led to the development of new materials
such as fiberglass and carbon fiber. Much later Alan advised
then Prime Minister Edward Heath to use carbon fiber for the
spars of his boat. All these teaching and research activities

ALAN COTTRELL 79
transformed the Cambridge department into a world-class

institution.
Alan’s work on fracture included the development, with
Bruce A. Bilby and K.H. Swinden, of the theory of elastic-
plastic cracks and the elucidation of the basic processes of fail-
ure at the tip of a sharp notch. A toughness parameter (critical
crack opening displacement) was identified for a metal con-
taining a crack, when extensive plastic yielding occurred at
the high stresses at the crack tip, which was characteristic of
the material, and which, when measured in a test piece, could
be used to predict behavior in a large structure. This repre-
sented an important advance in understanding and ensuring
structural integrity and had an enormous impact in this field.
Alan was also interested in studying fracture on the atomic
scale. With W.R. Tyson and Tony Kelly he considered factors
determining whether a material with a sharp crack would
fail in a brittle or ductile manner, enabling materials to be
classified as inherently brittle or ductile. Their classic 1967
study, “Ductile and Brittle Crystals” (Philosophical Magazine,
15(135):567–586), stimulated much further research, particu-
larly on nucleation of dislocation loops at crack tips.
In 1964 Alan moved to become Sir Solly Zuckerman’s
deputy in the UK Ministry of Defense. Although most reluc-
tant to leave the department and the university, he had become
concerned with the need to invigorate British manufacturing
industry with scientific technology, and felt that Whitehall
was the place to do this.
Working on the defense review by UK Secretary of State for
Defense Denis Healey, Alan led studies by the Army, Navy, and
Air Force on problems such as the excessive cost of a military
presence in the near and far East. This led to the cancellation
of the UK government’s East of Suez Policy. In 1966 he fol-
lowed Zuckerman to the Cabinet Office as deputy chief scien-
tific advisor. There he tackled various problems with scientific
aspects, including environment and pollution, the Advanced
Passenger Train, and the Torrey Canyon disaster.
In 1971 Alan was knighted and became chief scientific advi-
sor. His position became complicated with the arrival of Victor

Rothschild and his Central Policy Review staff, proposing to

make the work of the UK Research Councils (responsible for
government-funded research in the universities) more related
to national needs. Alan’s crucial suggestion that the Research
Councils should remain independent was accepted and led to
a compromise “customer-contractor” policy.
But Alan became increasingly uncomfortable with the mach-
inations of Whitehall politics. He played it straight and used
his powerful intellect to make his case, however u npopular. He
was clear about one thing: Knowledge is power in Whitehall.
In 1973, in a minute to the UK Nuclear Power Advisory
Board, and in 1974, in evidence to the Parliamentary Select
Committee on Science and Technology, Alan expressed his
concern about the integrity of the steel reactor pressure vessel,
which is critical to the safety of the pressurized water reactor
(PWR) promoted by Walter Marshall at that time for the UK
Civil Nuclear Program. This caused quite a stir. In response
Marshall set up a High-Level Pressure Vessel Committee in
1973 that examined the issue in great detail.
In the early 1980s, after publication of the second Marshall
Report, Alan felt satisfied that a robust safety case could be
established provided the report’s recommendations were
implemented. The report and Alan’s endorsement had a major
impact on the enquiry about building a PWR at Sizewell and
on getting UK Nuclear Installation Inspectorate approval,
and led more generally to major advances in the requirements
for ensuring the integrity of pressure vessels and other large
safety-critical structures.
Alan believed that nuclear energy is an important source
of power and that the public should be able to form a rational
view. To this end he set out the facts in simple terms in his 1981
book How Safe Is Nuclear Energy? (published by Heinemann
Educational).
In 1974 Alan accepted an invitation to become master of
Jesus College, Cambridge. He was glad to return full time to
his family and to academic life. He had to supervise a major
revision of the college statutes and prepare for the admission
of women. This proved a great success.

ALAN COTTRELL 81
In 1977 he became vice chancellor for two years, during

which he introduced the new chancellor, Prince Philip, to the
intricacies of the operation of the university. On returning full
time to college, his main activity was preparing for the arrival
of Prince Edward, the Queen’s youngest son, who became an
undergraduate in the college.
In 1986 Alan returned to the Metallurgy Department, where
he researched a new topic: the application of modern electron
theory of metals to metallurgical problems, such as embrittle-
ment of metals by certain impurities. He mastered the quite
difficult theory and published in 1988 an excellent book,
Introduction to the Modern Theory of Metals (published by the
Institute of Metals), followed by an impressive set of papers
on applications to important metallurgical problems and a
book on Chemical Bonding in Transition Metal Carbides (Maney
Publishing, 1995). During the last few years he published again
on the plasticity of metals, particularly on creep.
His accomplishments were recognized with numerous
honors and awards—the Royal Society Hughes (1961) and
Rumford (1974) Medals, the Platinum Medal of the UK Institute
of Metals (1965), the Acta Metallurgica Gold Medal (1977), the
Harvey Prize of the Technion (Israel) (1974), the Gold Medal
of the American Society for Metals (1980), the Kelvin Gold
Medal of the UK Institution of Civil Engineers (1986), and the
Von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society (1996). In
1996 he also received the Royal Society’s highest award, the
Copley Medal; he was the first physical metallurgist to receive
the medal since it was instituted in 1731. He also received 16
honorary degrees, including two from Cambridge University
(ScD in 1976, LLD in 1996).
He was a foreign honorary member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960), foreign fellow of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1970), and foreign
member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1970) and
US National Academy of Engineering (1976). He became a
fellow of the Royal Society in 1955 (vice president in 1964,
1976, and 1977) and in 1979 was elected to the Fellowship of
Engineering.

Alan Cottrell was the most outstanding and influen-

tial physical metallurgist of the 20th century. His concepts,
techniques, and analysis form the basis of modern fracture
mechanics applications to many materials systems. Through
his pioneering research and as an educator, he influenced
countless students, scientists, and engineers over the years and
will continue to do so. His papers and books are remarkable
for their clarity. In his studies he always knew what important
questions to ask and how to answer them. He had a brilliant
intellect which he retained to the end.
He was also a kind, gentle, and sensitive person with a sense
of humor, and he was very supportive. He was very eminent,
but did not realize it and was very modest. He loved his family
and was proud of Geoffrey working on nuclear fusion, which
Alan considered to be an important future energy source.
From 1996 he cared full time for his wife Jean, who suffered
from Parkinson’s disease. Sadly, she died in 1999. Her loss
affected him greatly.
His lifetime achievement and impact have been immense,
of which his family can be justly proud, and for which the rest
of us are grateful. He is greatly missed by his loving family
and by all of us who knew him and whose lives he touched.
He will be remembered with great affection and admiration.



J O H N P. C R AV E N
1924–2015
Elected in 1970
“Contributions to the development of sea-based deterrence,

deep-submergence vessels, and ocean technology.”
BY NICHOLAS JOHNSON1
J OHN PIÑA CRAVEN, a national leader in the innovation, de-

velopment, design, construction, and operational deployment
of major oceanic systems, died February 12, 2015, at the age of
90, in Honolulu.
John, or “Craven” as he answered the phone, was born
October 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. His father, a musi-
cian and stock analyst, represented a family naval tradition;
on his mother’s side were Barbary pirates—which he said con-
tributed his “black blood.”
He began his studies of ocean technology at the Brooklyn
Technical High School and went on to earn a BA from
Cornell University (1946), MS from the California Institute
of Technology (1947), and in 1951 a PhD in hydraulics and
mechanics from the University of Iowa. (He was inducted into
the UI College of Engineering’s Distinguished Engineering
Alumni Academy in 2002.) Most remarkable, and as evidence
of his wide-ranging curiosity and abilities, he decided later in
life to undertake, and succeeded in acquiring, a law degree
from George Washington University!
Much of his professional life and accomplishments involved
the Navy, beginning with World War II service aboard the USS
Nicholas Johnson was US maritime administrator (1964–1966).

1
85

New Mexico that led to his rank of ensign. He helped design

hulls for nuclear submarines at the David Taylor Model Basin
outside Washington (at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at
Carderock, Maryland).
He later worked as project manager and ultimately chief
scientist (1959–1969) for the Navy’s Polaris submarine pro-
gram and Special Projects Office (Deep Submergence Systems
Project; SEALAB). The Defense Department and US Navy each
awarded him their highest civilian award, the Distinguished
Civilian Service Award.
He is best known in some scientific circles for his work
developing the Bayesian search theory for locating objects lost
at sea. This was used on one occasion to find a lost hydrogen
bomb, and later in locating a missing submarine.
After his Navy service, he taught at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for a year, before being wooed away by
the University of Hawaii. He and his wife, Dorothy Drakesmith
Craven, whom he had met at the University of Iowa, moved to
Honolulu in 1970. She was a noted speech pathology professor
at the University of Hawaii. He served as the university’s dean
of Marine Programs, and later as director of its law school’s
Law of the Sea Institute. He was also appointed by the gover-
nor as Hawaii’s Marine Affairs Coordinator.
President Carter appointed him to the Weather
Modification Commission that developed a model for reduc-
ing the impact of hurricanes. And his scientific accomplish-
ments supported his acceptance to the prestigious Cosmos
Club in Washington, DC.
For all his extraordinary and innovative professional con-
tributions to engineering and his country, he was even more
remarkable for the breadth and diversity of his activities, tal-
ents, curiosity, and inquiring mind. He was an early innovator
with multimedia presentations, combining music, video, and
stories of the sea. And perhaps inspired by having earned his
law degree, he entered politics as a candidate for Congress.
He could design underocean cities (or water-based municipal
transportation systems) and play the piano; build innovative
submarines, write their history (The Silent War: The Cold War

JOHN P. CRAVEN 87
Battle Beneath the Sea; Simon & Schuster, 2001), and find them
when they went missing; and sing both opera and Pete Seeger
songs (he earlier sang in the choir at Trinity Episcopal Church
in Iowa City).
He would start his days with 50 pushups and an ocean
swim, and often end them with a cigar and a winning poker
game. He constructed innovative project management tools
(the project evaluation and review technique, PERT) and
wrote haiku. He mastered both engineering and law while
maintaining a body that successfully competed in marathons
and rough-water swims with athletes half his age. He could
theorize, and then create, a major agricultural innovation of
global consequence while writing his own set of Psalms.
Indeed, one of the most striking examples of the breadth of
his creativity was as founder of the Natural Energy Laboratory
of Hawaii, the sustainable development experiment he called
“a pipe, a pump, and a pond.” On formerly unproductive
Hawaiian land he created in 1974 a multifaceted laboratory
that used deep cold water, and its temperature differential with
the surface, to create electricity. The condensate from the cold
water pipes, plus the soil’s temperature differential between
the pipes’ chill at the plants’ roots and the soil’s surface,
enabled the growth of succulent vegetables and fruits. (The
pond was used to raise fish for protein.) Given the number of
the world’s people living near oceans, he envisioned the con-
tribution this might make globally.
When John Craven died, the world’s media considered his
death, and life, worthy of fulsome note. Obituaries appeared
in The Times of London (“racked up many of the undersea
world’s technological firsts”), The New York Times (“Dr. Craven
described an energy project in terms that echoed his own life.
‘It seemed,’ he said, ‘like perpetual motion.’”), The Economist
(“To outside observers his world came straight from Ian
Fleming”), The Washington Post (“a top scientist for the Navy
during the Cold War, who oversaw many undersea weaponry
and research programs, including efforts to retrieve a miss-
ing hydrogen bomb and to spy on the Soviet Union”), and
elsewhere.

There are far too many exciting stories from his life to repeat
them all here. More are available in the newspaper stories and
other material posted online under “John Piña Craven, Ameri-
can Treasure” (at http://fromdc2iowa.blogspot.com/2015/02/
john-pina-craven-american-treasure.html).
On April 12, 2015, the United States Navy held the “Dr. John
P. Craven Committal to Sea” from the deck of the USS Hawaii
(SSN 776) at the Submarine Piers, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-
Hickam, in Honolulu. On that day his ashes were returned,
with a 21-gun salute, to the ocean that he loved.
John Craven is survived by his wife of 64 years, Dorothy,
daughter Sarah (a women’s rights advocate; director,
Washington Office, United Nations Population Fund), son
David (a Chicago lawyer), and five grandchildren.



CHARLES CRUSSARD
1916–2008
Elected in 1976
“Contributions to metallurgical science and technology and its applications.”
BY JEAN PHILIBERT
CHARLES CRUSSARD, who died January 14, 2008, at age 91,

devoted his career to research in metallurgy.
He was born June 24, 1916, the son and grandson of mining
engineers—one of his grandfathers was the famous crystallog-
rapher Georges Friedel. He graduated first in his class from
the École Polytechnique and completed his studies at the École
des Mines in Paris. He then spent a few months at the Royal
School of Mines in London, but his training there was inter-
rupted by the war.
In 1942 he established a laboratory dedicated to metal-
lurgical research at the École des Mines. With just a few
collaborators he initiated research on plasticity, creep, and
recrystallization of aluminum. Shortly after the end of World
War II he managed to make a study trip to the United States
to learn about new developments in metallurgical research,
steel, powder metallurgy, and other areas. He completed his
education at a summer school in Bristol (UK) organized by Sir
Nevill Francis Mott.
He then spent a year in India, helping to organize the new
National Metallurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur, a laboratory
officially unveiled in 1950 by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Back
in France, he joined the French Steel Research Institute (IRSID)
as head of the physics department and, later, research director.
91

At both the École des Mines and IRSID, he was active in

several fields that he personally initiated. He led s tudies on
plastic deformation of aluminum and its alloys, single crystals
and polycrystalline specimens, and the structure and prop-
erties of grain boundaries—a topic to which he introduced
Jacques Friedel (a cousin), who went on to become famous in
solid state physics.
Crussard discovered several new phenomena related to
what came to be called polygonization, namely in situ recrystal
lization, polygonization during creep, and grain boundary
migration. He developed the measurement of thermoelectric
power as a tool to study the structural evolution of light alloys
and steels—a method that was unfortunately forgotten and
“rediscovered” 30 years later by younger scientists!
He maintained a strong interest in the martensitic trans-
formation of steel, a phenomenon to which he introduced the
author of this tribute. He launched with his collaborators sev-
eral new fields of research, most notably the micromechanisms
of fracture—a spectacular development known as “micro
fractography” thanks to a new tool, the electron microscope—
and the study of crystallographic textures in steels, mainly
used for the control of deep drawing of metallic sheets.
In parallel to those studies, he conducted personal work in
the theoretical description of thermal activation as a nucleation
process, the atomic structure of dislocations, the rheology of
creep, properties of point defects, and the yield point (elastic
limit) of steels. This brief listing shows the very broad array of
interests, basic and applied, in which he revealed his remark-
able abilities.
Yet despite his very successful research management at
IRSID, in 1963 Charles Crussard chose to follow a different
career: he was appointed scientific director of Pechiney, the
French aluminum company. With his new responsibilities,
he devoted a lot of effort to the coordination of research in
a large group in several places with different traditions. This
is the reason he decided to create a central research labora-
tory with important equipment (the so-called CRV, situated in
Voreppe, near Grenoble), a laboratory that grew rapidly and

CHARLES CRUSSARD 93
became famous among metallurgists all over the world. He

made important contributions to aluminum extractive metal-
lurgy, powder metallurgy, recrystallization and the formation
of aluminum alloys, and metallic surfaces, to name a few.
He was also active in many national and international insti-
tutions. Of particular note, he was one of the first members
of the International Deep Drawing Research Group (IDDRG;
president, 1960–1964) and the European Industrial Research
Management Association (EIRMA). These and his other inter-
national responsibilities were made easier thanks to his asso-
ciations with scientists all over the world. After he retired in
1983 he gradually decreased his involvement in French and
international committees.
He was the author or coauthor of 180 papers. His wealth
of activities as a research scientist and manager justifies the
many distinctions with which he was honored in France and
abroad: several French medals and awards, fellowship in the
American Society for Metals, and election as a foreign associ-
ate of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Charles Crussard made a strong and lasting impact on
metal lurgical research, in fundamental fields as well as
applied and industrial domains. Such richness and breadth of
initiatives and results were certainly due to his bright intellect,
his deep knowledge of physics, and his creativity, as well as
his many contacts and associations with foreign scientists and
engineers, especially in Great Britain and the United States.
He was a gentleman, scientist, and engineer.
Reference
Crussard C, Friedel J, Philibert J, Plateau J, Pomey G. 2009. L’œuvre
scientifique de Charles Crussard, 1916–2008. Paris: Presses des Mines.


R O B E RT G . D E A N
1930–2015
Elected in 1980
“Contributions to field, laboratory, and analytical researches clarifying wave,

erosion, and coastal processes developing relevant analytical procedures.”
BY ROBERT A. DALRYMPLE
R OBERT GEORGE DEAN, a world-renowned coastal engi-

neering scientist and engineer, died at age 84 on February 28,
2015, in Gainesville, Florida. He was an emeritus graduate re-
search professor at the University of Florida at the time, having
spent 30 years of his career teaching coastal engineering there.
Bob was born November 1, 1930, to George Horton Dean
and Harriet Blevins Dean in Laramie, Wyoming. He began col-
lege at Long Beach City College, intending to do refrigerator
repair, but after receiving an associate of arts degree in 1952,
he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley for his
BS in civil engineering in 1954. In April that year he married
Phyllis Thomas, beginning a 60-year-long partnership.
He then attended Texas A&M University for his master’s
degree (1956) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
for his DSc, which he received in 1959.
After a year at MIT as an assistant professor of civil engi-
neering, he took a job with Chevron Research Corporation in
La Habra, California, working on the design of offshore oil
platforms. It was during this time that he developed the stream
function wave theory, a computationally efficient numerical
method to compute the properties of nonlinear water waves.
He worked in the oil industry for five years and then
moved to the University of Washington for a year, until he was
95

offered the chairmanship of the Coastal and Oceanographical

Engineering Department at the University of Florida, the first
coastal engineering program in the country. With the excep-
tion of a seven-year hiatus at the University of Delaware as
Unidel Professsor of Civil Engineering, he was a Gator.
One aspect that characterized Bob’s research career was his
amazing ability to recognize the correct physics applicable to
a problem, write down the appropriate equations, and then
simplify the approach to make the solution look easy and
intuitive, much as a gifted athlete makes a sport look easy.
Throughout his professional life, Bob was intrigued by
coastal processes, such as tidal inlets, beach morphology,
sand transport, and of course waves. Early in his career at the
University of Florida, he invited Morrough P. O’Brien, former
dean at UC Berkeley, to spend part of his retirement at the uni-
versity, where they worked on the stability of tidal inlets. Bob
provided the hydrodynamics needed to explain why inlets
opened or closed during storms.
At Delaware (1975–1982), he provided a theoretical back-
ground to Bruun’s idea of an equilibrium profile—that is, that
there is a concave upward shape to a beach and that it could
be described by a simple algebraic formula, relating depth to
distance offshore. Using this equilibrium profile, he tackled a
number of vexing problems, such as providing a comprehen-
sive approach to the design of beach nourishment. Also during
this time, he and I wrote the textbook Water Wave Mechanics for
Engineers and Scientists (Prentice-Hall, 1984), which has been
in print for 30-plus years as an introductory text for coastal
engineering.
Recruited back to the University of Florida as a graduate
research professor, he continued working on the technology
of beach fills, leading to Beach Nourishment: Theory and Practice
(World Scientific Publishing Company, 2003), followed shortly
by the textbook Coastal Processes with Engineering Implications
(Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Bob’s immense contributions to the fundamentals of coastal
engineering in so many areas were recognized by the American
Society of Civil Engineers, which awarded him the International

ROBERT G. DEAN 97
Coastal Engineer Award in 1983 and the John G. Moffatt–Frank

E. Nichol Harbor and Coastal Engineering Award in 1987. He
was made a distinguished member of ASCE in 2010.
Bob also provided considerable service to the US Army
Corps of Engineers, serving for 17 years as a member of the
Coastal Engineering Research Board, which provides coastal
engineering research advice to the chief of engineers and the
Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory (formerly the Coastal
Engineering Research Center) in Vicksburg, Mississippi
(1968–1980; 1993–1998). He also participated, postretirement,
in a forensic study of the flooding of New Orleans (Interagency
Performance Evaluation Task Force), for which he received
his second Outstanding Civilian Service Award from the
Army in 2008.
Bob was active in the work of the National Research Council,
serving on six committees and chairing two very influen-
tial ones that produced the reports Responding to Changes in
Sea Level: Engineering Implications (1984–1986) and Drawing
Louisiana’s New Map: Addressing Land Loss in Coastal Louisiana
(2002–2006). He also served on the Committee on Natural
Disasters (1982–1986), which provided FEMA with guidance
for wave and surge calculations during hurricanes, and the
Marine Board (1981–1986).
The ASCE Coastal Engineering Research Council is the
custodian of the most important international conference on
coastal engineering. As chair for 12 years (1992–2004) Bob kept
it focused on serving the profession by saying “We do one
thing and we do it well.”
His contributions to the profession and to the state of Florida
(as a professor and as director of the Division of Beaches and
Shores in the Department of Natural Resources, 1985–1987)
were recognized by several awards from the Florida Shore and
Beach Preservation Association: the Jim Purpura Award (1979),
the Gold Medal (1987), and the Bill Carlton Award (1996). The
national American Shore and Beach Preservation Association
awarded him the Morrough P. O’Brien Award in 2001.
After he retired in 2003, Bob said to me, “You know, coastal
engineering is also my hobby.” And with that, he went right

on working on coastal engineering problems, consulting on

Hurricane Katrina and advising students, even going into the
office regularly.
Bob is survived by Phyllis, daughter Julie Dean Rosati (a
coastal engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers), son
Tim, and five grandchildren.


GE

T H O M A S F. D O N O H U E
1930–2014
Elected in 1994
“For contributions to aerothermodynamic design of

advanced aerospace propulsion systems.”
BY JAN SCHILLING
THOMAS FRANCIS DONOHUE devoted his career to ad-

vances in aviation, predominantly in propulsion systems. He
died October 25, 2014, in Jupiter, Florida, at the age of 84.
Tom was born August 24, 1930, in New York City. He
received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1952 and then joined the
US Army Corps of Engineers, followed by employment at
Sikorsky Aircraft and the Allison Division of General Motors.
In 1961 he began work in preliminary engine design at
General Electric Aircraft Engine Division in Evendale, Ohio.
He supported the GE1 high-bypass ratio fan demonstra-
tor that led to the Air Force’s awarding the contract for the
first high-bypass engine, the TF39 for the propulsion system
on Lockheed’s C5 transport aircraft. He played a major role
in defining basic engine configuration and cycle design
of the F101 low-bypass turbofan engine in support of the
USAF B-1 bomber. This was followed in the 1970s by work
on the YJ101 power plant that led to the F404 engine, which
powers the Navy F18 aircraft. Also during this period, Tom led
the CF6-6/-50 Systems Engineering team, during which the
CF6-50C2A/E2A models were certified and the high-pressure
compressor (HPC) titanium fire problems were resolved.
101

From 1981 until his retirement in 1995 Tom led GE Aircraft

Engine’s Advanced Engineering Department, where he made
important changes. In the early 1980s he managed the cycle
definition studies on the F101X that became the F110 advanced
fighter engine, powering both F16 and F15 aircraft. He later
made contributions to variable cycle engine technology lead-
ing to the YF120 power plant intended to power the advanced
fighter aircraft. In the 1980s when personal computers were
recognized as powerful tools Tom initiated the charge to bring
PCs to every engineer’s desk.
In the mid-1980s Tom was the GE technical leader for the
single-stage-to-orbit National Aerospace Plane (NASP) pro-
gram, including design of a subscale hypersonic flight test
vehicle and sponsorship of supersonic combustion tests at
Ohio State University. As a result of the NASP association with
Aerojet, Tom undertook leadership of proposals for the Space
Shuttle main engine turbopump turbine improvements and
air turboramjet studies.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s he supported President
Reagan’s Star Wars initiative with involvement in the
Turbomachinery in Space proposals, which included a full-
scale demonstration of a 67 MW turbine powered by super-
heated hydrogen driving a cryogenically cooled generator.
Most significantly, he established the cycle and architecture
for the GE90 high-bypass engine, which supports Boeing’s
777 aircraft, as well as technology development for the high-
speed civil transport propulsion system. He drove many
state-of-the-art concepts in fan and turbine aerodynamic
design while supporting technology advances in materials
development.
He was a member of a number of groups associated with
aerospace and aeronautics: the program committee of the
International Council of Aeronautical Sciences, NASA’s
Congressional Aeronautics Advisory Council and Industry
Advisory Board, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA)
Aerospace Technical Committee, and the SAE Aerospace
Council. He also was a member of the College of Engineering
Industry Advisory Council at the University of Cincinnati.

THOMAS F. DONOHUE 103
In addition to his election to the NAE, Tom was honored

in 1993 with General Electric Corporation’s highest technical
award, the Charles R. Steinmetz Award, for his imaginative
technical contributions in the design of advanced systems
leading to marketable engine products. Upon his retirement
in 1995, he was inducted into GE’s Aviation Propulsion Hall
of Fame. He continued to consult on aircraft engine cycles and
architecture.
He had a unique blend of engineering talents that included
detailed engine aerodynamics and mechanical design exper-
tise plus an excellent working knowledge of aircraft-engine
matching requirements. His leadership in pushing the tech-
nology boundaries enhanced both the commercial and mili-
tary propulsion systems, thus creating a foundation that is still
used today.
Tom married Barbara, his lifelong partner, in 1953. They
raised three children—James, Richard, and Colleen—and
enjoyed travel, history, and the arts. Throughout his life Tom
did oil painting when he had time away from his passion—
engineering. As he got into the full mode of retirement he took
pleasure in golf and watching football. He never lost his cre-
ative side, building an N-scale railroad city. He was a strong
supporter of the Arthritis Foundation.


BRIAN L. EYRE
1933–2014
Elected in 2009
“For understanding of neutron irradiation-induced damage in materials,

and for developing technologies and policies for the UK nuclear industry.”
BY COLIN WINDSOR AND RON BULLOUGH
BRIAN LEONARD EYRE, an outstanding metallurgist who

rose to be chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority,
died July 28, 2014, at the age of 80.
Brian was born November 29, 1933, the first child of Mabel
and Leonard Eyre, in a small terraced house in East London.
He did not shine at school but at 15 had the good fortune to
get a job with Fairy Aviation as a technical trainee working in
the materials laboratory. After seven years of evening study
and day release at Wandsworth Technical College, in 1957 he
gained a higher national certificate. He had also published
two papers relating to the microstructure of tin alloys and
was encouraged to study for the newly introduced diploma
in technology at Battersea Polytechnic Institute. In 1959, at age
25, he gained a 1st class honors diploma in technology.
He was recruited to the new Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories
of the UK Central Electricity Generating Board and soon
developed an interest in the metallurgical properties of irradi-
ated metals, which was to be his life’s work.
In 1962 he moved to Harwell, the UK Atomic Energy
Research Laboratory, which was then in its golden years as
a fountainhead of nuclear research and technology. He soon
had his own group in the Metallurgy Division, doing electron
transmission microscopy on irradiated metals such as iron and
105

molybdenum in careful studies of the nature, geometry, and

distribution of damage clusters. His expertise in understand-
ing metallurgy from first principles and his interactions with
theoretical metallurgists in Harwell’s Theoretical Physics
Division led to important joint publications.
Experimental electron microscopy measurements of the
shape, size, and orientation of interstitial loops could be
explained by analytical calculations of their elastic energy. A
later example was in the important practical problem of void
swelling, where stainless steel cladding in the Dounreay Fast
Reactor was observed to distort because of voids formed by the
amalgamation of excess vacancies caused by irradiation. For
this problem the experimental data could be fitted by a series
of coupled rate equations governing the growth of interstitial
loops from the radiation-induced vacancies and their transfor-
mation into voids. These rate equations were solved by main-
frame computers in those days, and now trivially on a PC.
In 1979 Brian was head-hunted to be the chair of Materials
Science at Liverpool University. But his academic career was
not to last! In 1984 he was head-hunted once again to come
back to the Atomic Energy Authority in a higher management
role as director of Fuel and Engineering. The optimistic future
envisaged then for nuclear power generation was exploded
in 1986 by Chernobyl. At almost the same time a collapse in
world oil prices and a torrent of gas from the North Sea meant
that Britain had an alternative “dash for gas” path to electricity
generation.
Again at almost the same time it became clear that decom-
missioning Britain’s old nuclear plants would be expensive—
indeed, comparable with the income from their future
generation capacity. Brian became heavily involved in fighting
the government to have a continuing role for nuclear power.
In the end the new Pressurized Water Reactor Sizewell B went
ahead, generating in 1995, but Britain was to have no new
nuclear stations in the 20 years thereafter.
The alternative was to turn the Atomic Energy Authority
from nuclear research to contract research on whatever subject
could be funded commercially. Brian became chief executive

BRIAN L. EYRE 107
officer of the authority in 1990 and, following a report by

consultants, it was turned into several “businesses,” some
nonnuclear. With Brian’s energy and powers of persuasion,
this process happened remarkably quickly. It was the era of
“privatization” and was supported by the government. The
commercial part of the operation became AEA Technology and
its shares were successfully sold in 1995 with Brian as deputy
chair. It was initially a great success and its shares had tripled
in value when Brian retired in 1997. Its success was not to last,
though; in 2012 it went into administration.
Brian was elected a fellow of the UK Royal Academy of
Engineering in 1992, a Commander of the British Empire in
1993, a fellow of the UK Royal Society in 2001, and a foreign
member of the NAE in 2009.
In retirement Brian remained as active as ever from his
office at the Oxford University’s Materials Department. But he
made time for his love of sailing with his wife Carol, who sadly
developed multiple sclerosis. As this advanced Brian turned
into a devoted carer. He also became an expert cook, so that
dinner with the Eyres remained a very enjoyable gastronomic
experience. He is survived by Carol and their two sons, Peter
and Steven.


JAMES L. FLANAGAN
1925–2015
Elected in 1978
“Contributions to the acoustic theory of speech and hearing processes and

engineering applications of this knowledge to voice communication.”
BY BISHNU S. ATAL AND LAWRENCE R. RABINER
J AMES LOTON FLANAGAN, an internationally recognized

pioneer and a guiding force in digital voice processing, died
August 25, 2015, just 4 hours short of his 90th birthday. He spent
33 years in research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, retiring as direc-
tor of information principles research in 1990. He then served
15 years at Rutgers University in dual roles as a research center
director and as university vice president for research.
Early Years
Jim was born August 26, 1925, to Hanks and Wilhelmina (née
Barnes) Flanagan in Greenwood, Mississippi. He grew up with
his younger brother, Marion, on a cotton farm owned by their
father, in sparse country seven miles east of Greenwood. He
rode the yellow bus to school over unpaved rural roads, and
did his homework by kerosene lamp until government acts in
the mid-1930s brought electrification and telephone commu-
nication to rural areas of the United States.
Encouraged by dedicated teachers, he was attracted to math
and science. He believed the necessity of improvisation and
alternate solutions in farm life amplified his interest in experi-
mentation. He played on the football team and was first chair
trumpet in the school band. He graduated from high school
109

in 1943 with moderately good grades and as president of his

class of about 70 students.
By entering college (Mississippi State University) immedi-
ately in the summer term and taking an accelerated program in
preengineering, he completed the first year of undergraduate
education before joining the US Army at age 18. He returned
home about three years later, picked up his studies with the
help and support of the GI Bill, and graduated with good
grades and a BS degree in electrical engineering.
His department head, Harry Simrall, urged him to continue
his education and helped him apply to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for a graduate assistantship. He was
delighted when MIT offered a graduate assistant position in
the Acoustics Laboratory under Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek
(two of the founders of Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, BBN).
This opportunity initiated a lifelong career in communications
engineering, acoustics, and speech signal processing.
The MIT Years

Completing the SM degree had depleted Jim’s financial
resources, but Professor Simrall again stepped in and not
only offered him a position as instructor but also helped him
successfully apply for a Rockefeller scholarship for doctoral
study. When the time came to commence his doctoral thesis
research at MIT in 1952, it was natural for Jim to turn again to
the Acoustics Laboratory and Professor Beranek, and to join
a project aimed at efficient coding of speech signals for voice
communication. His thesis result (1955) was a formant coding
system that required only one-tenth the bandwidth of a con-
ventional landline telephone channel.
His Years at Bell Telephone Labs

Because Jim had studied and been impressed by technical
papers emanating from Bell Telephone Laboratories, it was
an easy sell by Edward E. David (later science advisor to
the White House) to recruit him to his research department

JAMES L. FLANAGAN 111
in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Jim was assigned a “two-bay,

long side” laboratory, with newly hired technical assistant
Bernie Watson. Jim enjoyed periodically mimicking the classic
phrase of Alexander Graham Bell, “Mr. Watson, come here, I
want you.”
Bell Labs had just acquired its first digital computer, an IBM
650. It had no compiler or assembler. Jim’s first program, writ-
ten in binary, was a short-time Fourier transform for speech
signals. It took a month to write!
In time, Jim’s work was favorably received and he was
given responsibility to head the Speech and Auditory Research
Department in 1961. Werner Meyer-Eppler, of the University
of Bonn, invited him to contribute a book to a series he was
organizing for Springer Verlag. Jim accepted on the basis that
it be written as a spare-time effort outside of regular duties.
The first edition of Speech Analysis Synthesis and Perception
(1965) was well received, and soon translated and published
in Russian. The publisher subsequently urged a second
expanded edition (1972), and the book ultimately underwent
five printings.
Organizational changes at Bell Labs nudged Jim toward
engineering acoustics and he was given responsibility for the
Acoustics Research Department, where, in addition to digital
speech coding, he had the opportunity to work in the areas of
acoustic transducers and room acoustics. The following years
continued to be heavily devoted to efficient digital coding and
the transmission of speech, with a number of patents on adap-
tive quantizing and adaptive differential coding, which later
aided a useful product for increasing the capacity of private
line service.
In 1984 Jim was promoted to director of Information
Principles Research, with departments devoted to signal pro-
cessing, speech research, acoustics, robotics, human percep-
tion, and linguistics. He managed to maintain some ancillary
personal research on autodirective microphone arrays, digi-
tal transducers, and human/machine interaction. The latter
was aimed at spatially realistic audio/video t eleconferencing;
the first system, called HuMaNet (for Human-to-Machine

Network), was the subject of a cover article in the AT&T

Technical Journal.
Technological Achievements in the Bell Labs Years

Jim Flanagan’s individual research included comprehensive
modeling of basilar membrane motion in the inner ear, leading
to useful engineering models of auditory signal processing.
His research also provided the theoretical basis for experi-
mental development of a physiological model of vocal excita-
tion for speech production, which in turn provided a basis for
advanced types of vocoders.
Jim was a pioneer in the field of speech and audio process-
ing, with outstanding insights that changed both people-to-
people and people-to-machine communications. He always
had an eye on the long-term goals while working on current
technologies that greased the wheels for his many technical
contributions.
Another example of Jim’s ability to see into the future was
his long-range goal of inventing ways to give a computer a
mouth to speak and an ear to listen and learn. Perhaps the best
validation of his vision in this area was his 1976 paper in IEEE
Proceedings 64(4):405–415, “Computers That Talk and Listen:
Man-Machine Communication by Voice.” This paper pre-
dicted user agents such as Siri and Cortana—39 years before
their appearance in today’s smartphones! Much of the research
that led to today’s working synthesis and recognition systems
originated in Jim’s lab, realizing his vision of customer service
by machine-generated voice commands.
Jim had a clear vision of how a range of disparate multi-
media technologies could work in unison to create something
bigger and more useful as a whole. The HuMaNet system
integrated voice and image processing technologies with
advanced networking capability, leading to the concept of
agent-based visual systems.
Jim was the author or coauthor of more than 200 publica-
tions and more than 50 patents, including the design patent on
the artificial larynx (providing speaking capability to people

who had tracheotomies) and a patent on handling voice in a

data network, a forerunner to VoIP services.
In addition to his numerous technological contributions,
Jim was widely recognized as an insightful technical speaker
and writer. He had a knack for getting to the essence of com-
plex concepts and making them clear to an audience with a
wide range of experience and technical expertise.
The Rutgers Years

AT&T Bell Labs corporate policy at the time required officers
and directors to leave their jobs at age 65. Jim elected to retire
(1990), and a number of opportunities emerged around the
country. Discussions with his wife, Mildred, and three sons,
Stephen, James, and Aubrey—all married with families and
living within a one-hour radius in northern New Jersey—
favored remaining in Warren, NJ.
He accepted an offer at Rutgers University, commuting
20 minutes south rather than 10 minutes east. He was appointed
Board of Governors Professor of Electrical Engineering
and, jointly, director of the Computer Aids to Industrial
Productivity (CAIP) research center of about 85 people. The
center was supported in part by 20–25 corporate partners,
representatives of which formed the CAIP Center board of
directors and provided a wealth of interesting research targets
(such as automatic computer imaging to maintain quality in
pharmaceutical manufacture).
After three years of running the center, Jim was asked by
Rutgers University president Francis Lawrence to take the
position of university vice president for research (for 50,000
students). Initially Jim demurred, saying he could not separate
himself from close contact with technical work to become a
university administrator. The president said, “That’s OK, you
can do both jobs.” Thus began frequent trips across the Raritan
River to the central campus in New Brunswick, and less fre-
quent trips to the urban campuses at Newark and Camden.
These duties, which included the center research as well as
a great variety of administrative functions, yielded extensive

insight into management techniques for a major state univer-

sity—the opposite of those in industry.
After 15 years, Jim retired from Rutgers at age 80. Still
attracted to technology, he took on consulting for Avaya
Communication Research, reporting to the research presi-
dent. This period also encompassed a three-month visit to
Mississippi State University to assist in formulating and teach-
ing a new option in the Electrical Engineering Department on
multimedia communication.
Managerial Skills
Jim spent most of his technical career managing other indi
viduals as a department head and then as a lab director. He
guided the careers of more than two generations of indi
viduals who grew to positions of prominence in their own
right. An outstanding judge of technical talent, he attracted
and hired the best and the brightest individuals, and continu-
ally thought of ways to bring them to Bell Labs to work along-
side the members of his department.
A hallmark of Jim’s managerial skills was the general feel-
ing of the broad research community that every time one
research challenge was solved by members of Jim’s team, he
was ready with a new set of challenges, thus illustrating his
out-of-the-box thinking skills.
He inspired individuals to be the best they could be and
took an interest in all aspects of their technical growth. He
guided them with basic principles such as “you never get a
second chance to make a great first impression,” generally fol-
lowed by the sage advice to “do it right the first time.”
Service to the Technical Community and to the Nation

Jim Flanagan was a model in providing outstanding service to
the technical community and to the nation. While at Bell Labs,
he served the nation at critical times by being part of a blue
ribbon committee that analyzed the infamous 18-minute gap
in the Watergate tapes and by his analysis of the final spoken

words in the Challenger explosion. He also served on com-

mittees of the National Academy of Sciences and National
Academy of Engineering: the Academic Advisory Board
(1996–1998), Commission on Engineering and Technical Sys-
tems (1984–1986), Board on Telecommunications/Computer
Applications (1988–1990), and Board on Army Science and
Technology (1992–1995).
Jim believed strongly in service as a way of paying back
the debt accumulated by taking advantage of all that the vari-
ous technical societies offered. He volunteered and assumed
leadership positions in both the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE; as president of the Group on
Audio and Electroacoustics) and the Acoustical Society of
America (as president). And he had a way of making sure that
everyone he mentored also assumed positions of leadership at
the appropriate times in their technical careers.
Recognition of a Lifetime of Achievements

Jim’s work was blessed by widespread professional recogni-
tion. He received both national and international honors, such
as the National Medal of Science, the IEEE Medal of Honor,
election to both the NAE and the National Academy of
Sciences, the LM Ericsson International Prize for notable con-
tributions to telecommunications, the Marconi International
Fellowship, and honorary doctorates from the University of
Paris-Sud and the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
Jim is survived by his wife of 57 years, Mildred Bell
Flanagan; his brother Thomas Marion of Greenwood; sons
Stephen (Deborah), Jim, and Aubrey (Ann Marie); and grand-
children Aubrey, James, Bryan, Antonia, and Hanks.
Thoughts Offered by Son Jim

Professionally for Jim it was all about the science, and for
leisure it was all about the outdoors. Deriving from a Southern
agrarian heritage, it’s not surprising that he acquired and
developed an early and lifelong participation in hunting,

fishing, and high school/collegiate (amateur) football. These

were accompanied by an ear for music (no doubt enhanced by
his acoustic interest) and he studied and played the coronet.
He did not pilot aircraft while serving in the US Army Air
Forces, but he was passionate about the “wild blue yonder”
and obtained an advanced private pilot’s license with an
instrument rating. Later he engaged in tennis and jogging, and
maintained his interest in football as an avid spectator, par-
ticularly Southeastern Conference competition.
These leisure endeavors were not practiced in isolation.
All family members shared in them. Naturally with three
sons, he refined and cultivated our interests. Many hours
afield included copious training in marksmanship, safety,
and the demanding responsibilities of personal conduct. And
my brothers and I had many occasions to ride “copilot” and
wiggle the aircraft control yoke under his supervision. Jim’s
and Mildred’s musical combinations of coronet and piano pro-
duced some “dueling duos.” Traveling together both domesti-
cally and internationally was a mainstay for all of the family.
Between his leisure and professional states was his aware-
ness of and penchant for encouraging educational attainment.
He fostered interest and inspiration in scientific education,
particularly in children and young women.



R O B E RT L . F L E I S C H E R
1930–2011
Elected in 1993
“For contributions to the development and diverse

applications of high-temperature materials, solid solution
hardening, and etched particle track detectors.”
BY JAMES D. LIVINGSTON AND ELIZABETH L. FLEISCHER
R OBERT LOUIS FLEISCHER, a leading researcher in mate-

rials science and engineering for many years, died March 3,
2011, at age 80 of cardiac amyloidosis, a rare heart disease with
no known treatment or cure.
Bob was most notable for the extremely wide range of sci-
entific and engineering fields impacted by his work. He made
significant contributions to understanding of the mechani-
cal strength of metals, alloys, and high-temperature mate
rials, but he is most widely known as a pioneer in the study
of etched particle tracks in solids. These etched tracks not
only served as a new and useful method of detecting nuclear
radiation, but found widespread applications in a host of
fields, including nuclear physics, cosmic ray physics, dating
of minerals and archaeological artifacts, lunar science, radon
dosimetry, and filtration.
Bob was born in Columbus, Ohio, on July 8, 1930, the second
son of Rosalie Kahn and Leopold Fleischer. He was only nine
when his father died, so he was raised mostly by his mother.
After graduating from Columbus Academy, he studied engi-
neering and applied physics at Harvard University, receiving
his AB in 1952, his AM in 1953, and his PhD in applied physics
in 1956. While at Harvard, he met and married Barbara Simons,
a love match that lasted throughout his life.
119

Bob’s doctoral research at Harvard was under Bruce

Chalmers, a British physical metallurgist who had recently
arrived at Harvard and was an expert in the solidification and
deformation of metals. Bob’s thesis research introduced him to
the study of the mechanical properties of metals, a subject that
interested him throughout his career.
The plastic deformation of metals and alloys occurs by the
motion of linear crystal defects called dislocations, and one
source of strengthening in pure metals is the interaction of
dislocations with the boundaries between adjacent crystals,
commonly called grain boundaries. Bob’s thesis involved the
growth by directional solidification of aluminum bicrystals,
samples that contained only one grain boundary. This approach
enabled detailed study of the effect of a single grain boundary
on the strength of metals and led to his first published paper.
His first position after Harvard was assistant professor of
metallurgy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
he served from 1956 to 1960, when he became a staff physicist
at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady.
GE was his home base for 32 years, during which he also
served as a senior research fellow in physics at the California
Institute of Technology (1965–1966), adjunct professor of
physics and astronomy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(1967–1968), visiting lecturer in geophysics at the University
of Western Ontario (1968), visiting scientist at the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Center
for Atmospheric Research (1973–1974), adjunct professor of
mechanical engineering and applied physics at Yale (1984),
and adjunct professor in geological sciences at SUNY-Albany
(1981–1987).
After retiring from GE in 1992, Bob was a research profes-
sor of earth and environmental sciences at Rensselaer until
1997, when he became a research professor of geology at
Union College in Schenectady. These appointments in differ-
ent departments at so many different organizations provide
testimony to the wide breadth of his research.
His research at MIT and his first years at GE focused on
solution hardening, analyzing the strengthening of alloys by

ROBERT L. FLEISCHER 121
the interaction between dislocations and alloying elements.

Differences in size and compressibility between alloying atoms
and the dominant atoms of the metal produce localized inter-
nal stresses in the crystal lattice that interact with the stress
fields of dislocations, interfering with dislocation motion and
thus producing hardening. His research gained recognition in
the field, and the term “Fleischer hardening” is still used to
refer to some of his specific contributions.
In the late 1980s Bob returned for a few years to the study of
mechanical properties of materials, this time with a focus on
high-temperature properties. The efficiency and total thrust
of a jet engine increase with peak temperatures of operation
and current limits are set by the thermal constraints on mate-
rials. Nickel-based “superalloys” largely derive their high-
temperature strength from an intermetallic compound, nickel
aluminide (Ni3Al). A variety of other intermetallic compounds
have been considered for high-temperature applications, and
Bob’s major contribution to this field was to assemble and edit
a four-volume compendium on what is known about these
compounds and their properties, particularly their mechani-
cal properties at high temperatures. This series, Intermetallic
Compounds (with Jack Westbrook; Wiley, 2000), became the
major source of information about these important and prom-
ising materials.
Although Bob’s contributions to mechanical properties
of materials were significant, he became best known for his
work on nuclear tracks in solids, a topic he worked on from
1962 until his death. Two of his colleagues at General Electric,
P. Buford Price and Robert M. Walker, had discovered the etch-
ing of nuclear tracks in mica in 1961, and invited Bob to join
them in this promising new field.
Paths of nuclear particles had much earlier been detected
in cloud chambers, where, traveling through supersaturated
gas, such as moist air, the particles produce a trail of tiny
droplets. Later the bubble chamber was developed, in which
nuclear particles traveling through a liquid close to boiling
produced lines of bubbles. To these established techniques
for nuclear track detection, cloud chambers and bubble

chambers, the work of Fleischer, Price, and Walker added

etched particle tracks in solids. Their pioneering work, sum-
marized in their coauthored book Nuclear Tracks in Solids:
Principles and Applications (University of California Press,
1975), generated widespread interest in laboratories around
the world, which in turn led to many international confer-
ences on the subject.
Traveling through solids, high-energy nuclear particles
produce a wake of displaced atoms that has higher energy
than the surrounding material, making the track susceptible
to preferential removal by chemical etching. The etched track
has the advantage that it is permanent and can be enlarged
to become visible in an optical microscope. Bob and his col-
leagues rapidly found that the ability to etch nuclear tracks in
solids was not limited to mica but could be applied to numer-
ous minerals and even to many glasses and plastics. This
greatly widened the applicability of the technique.
Bob summarized the many applications of etched nuclear
tracks in solids in a popular-science book, Tracks to Innovation:
Nuclear Tracks in Science and Technology (Springer, 1998). He
describes many other uses of etched nuclear tracks in science
and technology, including nuclear physics, neutron dosimetry
in nuclear technology and radiobiology, even earthquake pre-
diction and the use of filters to remove yeast particles from
beer. And in a characteristic Fleischer pun, he wrote that in
embarking on a study of etched nuclear tracks, which are
essentially linear holes, he and Price and Walker embarked on
a “holey” quest.
Etched tracks proved particularly powerful in studies of
cosmic rays, which are fast-moving nuclei of extraterrestrial
origin. Sheets of plastic detectors were sent aloft in high-
altitude balloons, and the varying speed of the nuclei through
the plastic led to variations in the length and shape of the
etched tracks that produced information on the charge and
energy of each nucleus, allowing identification of each. Most
cosmic rays observed in these experiments originated outside
the solar system, but plastic and glass track detectors sent to
the moon with Apollo 16 generated considerable information

on particles associated with solar flares. Tracks produced by

cosmic rays have also been studied in numerous m inerals,
meteorites, moon rocks, and glass from a Surveyor moon
lander brought back by Apollo 12.
At a NASA meeting in Houston, Bob was fascinated to learn
that the space helmets worn by the Apollo astronauts were
made of Lexan polycarbonate, which had been established as
a well-calibrated detector of cosmic rays. He obtained several
helmets from the Apollo 8 and Apollo 12 missions to deter-
mine what doses of heavy high-energy particles the astronauts
had been exposed to. From the shapes of some of the tracks,
it was clear that several of the particles came to rest as they
were leaving the helmet, i.e., after traversing the astronaut’s
head. Reporting these results, he announced that they now
had exact quantitative evidence on what was “going through
the minds” of the astronauts during their missions. This was
a clever play on words, but not all the astronauts appreciated
this particular example of Bob Fleischer humor.
Nuclear track etching has also found wide use in fission-
track dating. The spontaneous fission of uranium-238 pro-
duces etchable fission tracks in many solids, with the density
of tracks depending on both the age of the sample (time since
it last cooled) and the concentration of uranium. The latter can
be determined from slow-neutron irradiation of the sample,
which produces fission of uranium-235 and new etchable
tracks. This dating technique has been used with a wide vari-
ety of minerals and archaeological specimens, including a tool
used by early humans.
One of the most widespread practical uses of nuclear track
etching is for the detection of radon. Radon (a radioactive
daughter of uranium-238) and its own radioactive daughters
(which include lead, bismuth, and polonium atoms) produce
alpha particles (helium nuclei) whose tracks can be revealed
in plastic track detectors. Because these alpha particles can be
dangerous to health, radon track detectors are commonly used
to determine long-time exposure to radon in homes and else-
where. Radon detectors had originally been used by Terradex,
a spinoff company from GE, in exploration for uranium ores,

but this business has declined while their use for health pro-
tection has risen.
Radon also produces nuclear tracks in glass, and in one of
Bob’s final research programs at Union College, he studied the
use of common eyeglasses as a measure of long-time radon
exposure. Once a family member, talking with him about the
various things he had done with his life, asked him when he
felt most in his element. “Radon is my element,” he said.
Bob continued close collaboration with Walker and Price
after they left GE. Their seminal 1960s work on etched particle
tracks had a huge impact around the world. Later he worked
closely with other GE colleagues, including Howard Hart and
Antonio Mogro-Campero, on nuclear tracks. He coauthored
papers with as many as 50 GE colleagues and with more than
60 collaborators from elsewhere.
Bob received many awards for his research, including in
1971 the US Atomic Energy Commission’s prestigious E.O.
Lawrence Award. While most awardees attend such occasions
with their wives, Bob was accompanied not only by his wife
Barbara but also by 10 others of his extended family. His was
a very close family.
Among his many other honors were NASA’s Exceptional
Scientific Achievement Medal and the American Nuclear
Society’s Special Award for Distinguished Service in the
Advancement of Nuclear Science. He received a Golden Plate
Award (1972) from the American Academy of Achievement
and was presented with GE’s R&D Center’s Coolidge
Fellowship Award, GE’s highest scientific award. He was
elected to the NAE and the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences and was a fellow of the American Physical Society,
American Geophysical Union, American Society of Metals,
and Health Physics Society.
In addition to over 350 published papers, Bob had 19 pat-
ents and received three IR-100 awards from Industrial Research
Magazine for his technological contributions. His work led to
two spinoff companies, Nuclepore, which utilized etched par-
ticle tracks to produce filters, and Terradex, which used etched
particle tracks to detect radon.

Turning to Bob’s private life, he left daily love notes for

his wife Barbara whenever he left for work. He lived a life of
love—and humor, teaching his children never to take anything
too seriously. Both daughters ended up going into science, not
because Bob urged them to but because they observed first-
hand how much pleasure he took in his work.
As he described in one of his later writings, Bob’s studies
“continue to provide new adventures and undiminished intel-
lectual stimulation.” At the same time, he maintained a healthy
balance in life, always arriving at home for dinner before 6:00.
He read widely, biked to work when the weather was good,
and swam at lunch when it wasn’t.
Among those speaking at Bob’s memorial service was his
long-time friend Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in physics. He
recalled a friendly bet with Bob at a weekend lakeside party.
Bob tied himself to a small boat and swam in one direction
while Ivar, in the boat, rowed in the other. To Ivar’s great sur-
prise, it was quite a battle, and most spectators concluded that
Bob had won. Those many lunchtime swims had made him a
very strong swimmer.
Bob is survived by his brother Richard, his wife Barbara,
daughters Cathy and Elizabeth (Betsy), and grandchildren
Allison and Daniel. He will be remembered not only for his
many contributions to science and technology, but also for his
loving, humor-filled, and warmhearted approach to life.
We are pleased to acknowledge the assistance of Barbara,
Cathy, and Bob’s colleagues Howard Hart and Buford Price in
preparing this memorial.

Fisher Photo, Powell & Hollis, Emeryville, CA

R E N AT O F U C H S
1942–2015
Elected in 1994
“For engineering contributions in the design, construction, and operation

for large-scale manufacturing of recombinant DNA proteins.”
BY STEPHEN W. DREW1
R ENATO FUCHS, industry leader in the scaleup and man-

ufacture of recombinant DNA pharmaceuticals and former
senior vice president at Centocor Inc., Chiron Corporation,
and other biotechnology companies, died September 7, 2015,
at the age of 72.
He was born November 24, 1942, in the Castelnuovo Don
Bosco, a commune in the province of Asti in the Piedmont
region of Italy, to Mirko Fuchs of Zagreb, Croatia, and
Leopoldina Pregelj of Trieste, Italy. Shortly after his birth his
parents moved the family to Switzerland, and at the end of
World War II they returned to what had become Yugoslavia.
They moved again, when Renato was 7, to the new nation of
Israel, and 5 years later settled in Cali, Colombia, where he
spent his adolescence and early youth.
He attended Santa Librada High School and then the
Universidad del Valle, both in Cali, with a year of study as
a science foreign exchange student at Oakland University in
Rochester, Michigan. He graduated from the Universidad del
Valle in 1967 with a bachelor of science in chemical engineering
The author appreciates contributions from Daniel I.C. Wang (MIT),

1
Arnold L. Demain (MIT and Drew University), and Charles L. Cooney

(MIT).
127

and a research thesis on production of single-cell protein grow-

ing on molasses.
He continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, enrolling in the new program of biochemical
engineering (Course 20), with Daniel I.C. Wang. He completed
his master of science in 1969 with a dissertation on the growth
of thermophilic bacteria on normal alkanes, and went on to
earn his PhD in biochemical engineering in 1974 with a thesis
on the “Utilization of mixed substrates by mixed cultures in
continuous culture.”
The first 14 years of his career were at Schering-Plough
Corp., in Union, New Jersey. He was responsible for the design,
commissioning, and startup of two antibiotic manufacturing
plants for offshore production in Brazil and Mexico. He also
designed the first large-scale recombinant DNA production
facility in New Jersey for the manufacture of alpha interferon;
the production technology was subsequently transferred to
Schering-Plough’s manufacturing plant in Ireland. Alpha
interferon is used to treat cancers such as melanoma, hairy
cell leukemia, and Kaposi’s sarcoma as well as viral infections
such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C, with annual worldwide
sales of $1.5 billion.
At Schering-Plough Dr. Fuchs earned a worldwide repu-
tation as an expert in the large-scale manufacture of proteins
under rigorous good manufacturing practice (GMP), required
to conform to the guidelines of agencies that control authori-
zation and licensing for the manufacture of active pharmaceu-
tical products and drugs.
In 1988 he joined Centocor Inc. (in Malvern, Pennsylvania),
where he was responsible for the design and operation of a
large-scale cell culture manufacturing plant. He introduced
one of the first large-scale applications of perfusion bio
reactors and was a leader in assembling the multidisciplinary
team that saw monoclonal antibodies as human therapeutics
through clinical trials and then to commercial manufacture at
multikilogram quantities. His wife noted that in the last years
of his life he was consulting for two biotechnology companies
in Mexico and Colombia.

RENATO FUCHS 129
His publications and presentations on the design and

scaleup of mammalian cell culture and production of mono-
clonal antibodies are benchmark contributions and his insights
continue to influence biological process design.
In 1993 he moved to one of the largest biotechnology com-
panies at the time, Chiron Corp. (Emeryville, California),
as senior vice president of biopharma operations and pro-
cess development, responsible for manufacturing plants
and development laboratories in Emeryville and Vacaville,
CA, as well as St. Louis, Puerto Rico, Amsterdam, Marburg
(Germany), and Siena (Italy). During his tenure, Chiron greatly
expanded capacity for manufacturing newly approved drugs
such as Betaseron for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, and
Menjugate, a vaccine to prevent meningitis C, as well as drugs
and vaccines in development and clinical studies worldwide.
After leaving Chiron in 2002, he returned to the Boston
area and held senior positions at several biotech companies—
Transkaryotic Therapies, Shire Human Genetic Therapies, and
Altus Pharmaceuticals, all in Cambridge. He became a consul-
tant to the international biopharmaceutical industry in 2007.
He was also a member of the board of directors of Auxilium
Pharmaceuticals and of several scientific advisory boards for
academic programs and startup companies.
Renato’s most impressive skills lay in his ability to observe
and analyze complex technical systems and, quite often, to ask
precisely the right question at the right moment to unblock
insight and enable his colleagues. We already miss this gift
from Renato.
He was also inclusive, warm, and friendly. He always had
time for conversation, or encouragement, or to host a gather
ing to establish connections among his friends and peers. He
was admired by his fellow graduate students and later by fac-
ulty members at MIT. He became well known for his fantastic
parties that brought faculty, students, community members,
and a range of international figures, including diplomats,
together to enjoy dining, music, and landmark conversation.
Throughout his career he opened doors for MIT graduates
and provided them their first job in industry. He maintained

close and fluid communication with MIT professors as well as

industry contacts, fellow students from graduate school, and
friends and families from around the world, and continued
to host the social events that strengthened ties and sharing
insights across many dimensions.
Though brilliant and committed to landmark accomplish-
ment, Renato was unassuming; he was focused on those
around him. He had substantial professional and personal
impact on his colleagues, friends, and family, and will be
greatly missed.
He is survived by his wife, Pubenza Valderruten Peters,
sons Alex and Robert, and sister Jenny.



JOHN H. (JACK) GIBBONS

1929–2015
Elected in 1994
“For leadership in a broad spectrum of initiatives toward the development

and communication of national policies for technological issues.”
BY SAM BALDWIN, ROSINA BIERBAUM, JOHN

HOLDREN, AND MAXINE SAVITZ
J OHN HOWARD GIBBONS died at age 86 on July 17, 2015. He

leaves a legacy of unparalleled leadership in science and tech-
nology policy for the nation as director of the C ongressional
Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) and as science advi-
sor to President Bill Clinton and director of the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). His mentor-
ing of staff at OTA and OSTP also contributed to the develop-
ment of a legion of science policy experts across the United
States. As Vice President Al Gore said, “He was utterly unique
and irreplaceable.”
Jack was born January 15, 1929, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
With a love of nature and hiking, he ran a Boy Scout camp
when he was 13 and became an Eagle Scout and a member of
scouting’s national honor society, the Order of the Arrow. He
graduated from Randolph-Macon College in 1949 with bach-
elor’s degrees in mathematics and chemistry and got his PhD
in physics from Duke University in 1954.
His career began in 1954 as a nuclear physicist at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory (ORNL), Tennessee, where he studied the
role of neutron capture in the stellar nucleosynthesis of heavy
elements and ultimately became the group leader for nuclear
geophysics. With coworkers, he founded Ortek, a company
that produced radiation detectors and other instruments and
133

was later sold to EG&G Corporation. From 1969 to 1973 he

was director of the ORNL Environmental Program, where he
initiated and directed research on energy efficiency in build-
ings, transportation, and electricity as well as on the environ-
mental impacts of energy supply and resource use.
Jack was named the first director of the Federal Office of
Energy Conservation by President Richard Nixon in September
1973, just before the oil embargo started in October 1973. In
response, he launched the first national campaigns to reduce
oil use and promote energy independence and security.
He returned to Oak Ridge in late 1974 as professor of p
hysics
and director of the Energy, Environment, and Resources
Center at the University of Tennessee, where he focused on
energy management, energy efficiency, and the environ
mental impacts of energy production and use. He was one
of a handful of academic leaders then initiating and building
interdisciplinary energy and environmental programs at uni-
versities around the country.
In 1979 he went back to Washington to lead OTA, an inde-
pendent, bicameral, nonpartisan agency that provided analy-
sis for the Congress and the nation of the benefits, costs, and
risks of available approaches to the scientific and technological
challenges facing society. Under his leadership (1979–1993),
OTA researchers generated more than 500 reports on agricul-
ture, biotechnology, energy, environment, health, information
technology, national security, space, transportation, and other
topics of national interest.
Many of OTA’s reports had significant impacts on congres-
sional debates. Indeed, Jack’s intent was to have every side
build from the same, well-grounded foundation of scientific
information and technological insight, raising the level of
political discourse. He wanted OTA reports to be “policy rele-
vant, but never policy prescriptive.” He considered the analy-
sis to be only half the work; translating the data and analysis
into usable information and communicating it effectively was
the other half.
Jack built OTA into an immensely productive, influential,
and widely respected source of policy-relevant science and

JOHN H. (JACK) GIBBONS 135
technology insight, not just for Congress and the nation but
for the world. Two years after he left OTA, the agency was
dissolved in a contentious budget-cutting move that was
lamented by many on both sides of the aisle. Amo Houghton
(R-NY) even wrote an “In Memoriam” piece in observance of
its closure.1
For years after OTA’s untimely demise, Jack’s presence in
a Congressional hearing room would give rise to members’
laments about the loss of the “think tank” that helped them
evaluate the consequences of legislation involving science and
technology. The agency’s legacy lives on, however, for the work
of OTA became a global model; the European Parliamentary
Technology Assessment network, for example, was estab-
lished in 1990 and now comprises 20 member countries.
In February 1993 President Clinton appointed Jack assis-
tant to the president for science and technology and direc-
tor of OSTP, positions he held until 1998. He also served on
the National Security Council, Domestic Policy Council,
and National Economic Council; cochaired the President’s
Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST);
and initiated and oversaw the National Science and Technology
Council, providing integrated science and technology budgets
across all federal agencies.
Jack had extraordinary impact. He focused attention on
funding for energy research, development, and demonstra-
tion; new initiatives in biomedical research; and the estab-
lishment of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.
He was an effective advocate for the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty to halt the development of new nuclear weapons,
which President Clinton signed in 1996. He promoted the
International Space Station as a global initiative that included
the Russians, encouraging engagement with them during a
period of dramatic change in that country. He was a leader in
US cooperation with Russia to keep nuclear materials safely
stored.
1
Published in the Congressional Record, Extension of Remarks, Sept. 28,
1995, pp. E1868–E1870.

He initiated the Partnership for a New Generation of

Vehicles, which developed high-efficiency hybrid vehicles.
He was the first OSTP director to create a division focused on
the environment, complementing the Divisions on Science,
Technology and Innovation, and National Security and
International Affairs. He oversaw the first National Climate
Assessment, which he had successfully encouraged Congress
to endorse in legislation (he later reminded his staff that “we
have to be careful what we wish for, we might need to imple-
ment it!”). And he led US engagement on science and technol-
ogy with other governments around the world.
After leaving the White House in April 1998, Jack served
as the Karl T. Compton Lecturer at MIT (1998–1999); senior
advisor to the US Department of State (1999–2001), where he
assisted the secretary in revitalizing science and technology
capabilities, including creating the position of science advi-
sor to the secretary; president of Sigma Xi (2000–2001); board
chair of Population Action International; and member of
the Virginia Commission on Climate Change (2008), among
others. Overall, he served on nearly 20 advisory and work-
ing committees of the National Academies, and on nearly
60 other civic and professional boards and advisory groups.
He chaired the Demand/Conservation Panel of the National
Academies’ Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Energy
Systems (CONAES) (1976–1979). The panel’s report made
the case, then controversial, that US energy efficiency could
double over 35 years; it did.
He was also one of the first signers of the 2004 Scientist
Statement on Restoring Scientific Integrity to Federal
Policymaking, continuing his lifelong emphasis on the impor-
tance of scientific integrity as a buffer to political expediency.
Jack’s work was recognized at the highest levels. In addi-
tion to being a member of the NAE, he was a fellow of the
American Physical Society (APS), American Association
for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many honors, he
was awarded the APS Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the
Public Interest; the AAAS Philip Hauge Abelson Prize for

sustained exceptional contributions to advancing science;

the Federation of American Scientists Public Service Award;
the Alliance to Save Energy Lifetime Achievement Award; the
NASA Distinguished Service Medal; medals from the French
and German governments for fostering scientific coopera-
tion; honorary doctorates from half a dozen universities; and
he was the inaugural honoree in the Energy Efficiency Forum
Hall of Fame.
He demonstrated by example the value of science to inform
policy and the importance of careful analytical work. He
believed his key job was to “speak truth to power,” and he
did so effectively, with a folksy style and humor that defused
tension when some did not want to hear the message. When
he took up his position in the Clinton/Gore administra-
tion, Scientific American titled his profile “The Nicest Guy in
Washington”—and that was after he’d worked for Congress
for 13 years.
He was unflappable even under the pressures for which
Congress and the White House are legendary, and he was artic-
ulate in explaining not just the science and technology around
a given issue but also the policy and ethical dimensions.
He was also known for a wry sense of humor often con-
veyed in one of the innumerable quotes he knew by heart. As
he warned about the dangers of climate change, for example,
he observed that “Americans never see the handwriting on the
wall until their backs are up against it” (Adlai Stevenson), and
“If we don’t change our direction we’re likely to end up where
we’re headed” (Chinese proverb).
When his daughter Ginny asked “How do you remain so
optimistic when the world is falling apart?” he said, “There
is no other choice.” And when she asked how he was able to
maintain his sense of humor in the face of world calamities,
he said, “Laughter is often just a step away from despair.”
An engraved stone on his desk reflected his determination,
reading “Illegitimi non carborundum,” loosely translated as
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down!”
Jack had a deep commitment to mentoring the lay public as
well as presidents and members of Congress. He gave countless

lectures to garden clubs, junior colleges, Rotary clubs, scout

troops, and church congregations with zeal equal to that of
his congressional testimonies, briefings to the Cabinet, and
plenary lectures to science societies. He was a true “civic
scientist” and mentored all staff he worked with about the
importance of this responsibility. He was indefatigable in his
mentoring of aspiring young scientists, engineers, and policy
analysts, spending countless hours helping them chart their
courses and regaling them with the lessons he had learned
from decades of working at the science-policy interface.
Most important, Jack was a good-hearted, decent person.
Always a gentleman, he was humble, kind, generous, and
witty. He was full of life and his family was always surrounded
by friends. His wife Mary Ann (née Hobart) remembers that
he could chat with anyone, and that he would often adopt the
accent of whomever he engaged in conversation, especially in
the Tennessee mountains, such as “You-uns come back soon,
hear!” His daughter remembers “lazy summers filled with
lovely cocktail parties outside accompanied by laughter, light-
ning bugs, and George Shearing jazz in the background.”
Jack loved music and had a rich bass singing voice. He met
Mary Ann in a choir and they sang together for as long as he
lived. Music was a constant part of family life; his daughters
remember Jack singing in the quartet of a local Oak Ridge pro-
duction of “The Music Man,” and by the end of all the rehears-
als the entire family could practically play all the parts. When
he interviewed for the science advisor position with President
Clinton and Vice President Gore in Arkansas on Christmas
Eve 1992, he made it back to Virginia in time to perform in
his church’s evening service. He even played the washtub and
sang at the memorable OTA holiday parties each year.
Jack’s love of nature and adventure pervaded his life. He
took Mary Ann spelunking on one of their first dates; for-
tunately his brother William was along to help extricate her
from a particularly difficult passage. In his 70s he could out-
pace hikers half his age in the mountains of Colorado, on
the beaches of Maine, or in the forests of Virginia. He spent

countless hours caving, hiking, and pondering how to leave

this Earth a better place than he found it.
He is survived by his wonderful wife of 60 years, Mary
Ann; daughters Virginia Barber and Mary Marshall Meyer;
his sister Dr. Elizabeth Reynolds; and eight grandchildren.
Daughter Diana C. Gibbons passed away in 2014.


ANDREW S. GROVE
1936–2016
Elected in 1979
“Leadership in semiconductor technology, particularly in contributions to the

understanding of structure and instabilities of the silicon-oxide interface.”
BY EUGENE S. MEIERAN
A NDREW STEPHEN GROVE died March 21, 2016, at age 79

in Los Altos, California. He was a major force in the science,
technology, development, growth, and unprecedented expan-
sion of the semiconductor industry from 1963 to the present day.
These factual statements are 100 percent accurate but
convey nothing of the substance of Andrew Grove, or Andy—
or ASG, or “A.,” or “a.,” or “G.,” or Grove, nicknames he was
accustomed to use and respond to throughout his 53-year
career. And these were not just simple nicknames; each con-
veyed a message! A recipient immediately understood by the
way Andy signed his missives whether he was pleased, dis-
missive, upset, or merely impartial in his response (a message
signed with a simple “a.” was always treasured!). But noting
the effect (reverence—or dismay) of receiving an “andygram”
does not substantially help define Andy’s impact on people.
If Andrew Grove were but a brilliant scientist, writing a
memorial testament for him would be fairly easy: list his
books, accomplishments, and awards, and state that the world
is better off for his having lived and contributed much to soci-
ety. Similarly, if he were a great engineer one could recite his
accomplishments, or if he were a great manager or educator,
one could mention the organizations or organizational pro-
cesses he created or name the many influential students he
141

trained. On the human side, if he overcame enormous physi-

cal or mental obstacles to achieve success, one could marvel
at how he achieved so much in spite of life’s difficulties and
challenges. If he shed his personal privacy to assist in help-
ing patients and doctors come to grips with prostate cancer by
publishing an article such as “Taking on prostate cancer: What
to learn from a 15-year survivor” (Fortune magazine, May 13,
1996), one could point to a compassionate and involved senior
executive willing to reach out to improve health care.
If the accomplishments in each domain were meritorious,
each would deserve several pages individually. But what does
one do when the person, this Andrew S. Grove, does all these
within his short life span, at a level acclaimed by his peers as
expert or genius?
How does one describe a person who survived Nazi and
then Communist tyrannies, who through his enormous talent
and skills created a technology that became globally perva-
sive, then went on to manage one of the greatest technological
revolutions in history, and who in failing health himself con-
tributed to medical science in helping understand and lead to
possible cures for not one but two degenerative, disabling, and
life-threatening diseases? Much has been written about Andy
Grove; none of it adequately chronicles this extraordinary
man’s global impact on technology and society.
András István Gróf was born to Maria and George Gróf in
Budapest on September 2, 1936. At age 4 he acquired scarlet
fever, a disease that nearly cost him his life and left him with a
severe hearing impairment for most of his adult life.
Living in Hungary under an authoritarian regime during
his early years was nothing compared to what happened
after the Nazis invaded in 1944. Hundreds of thousands
of Jews were rounded up and deported to the Nazi killing
camps; Auschwitz alone was said to have executed as many
as 400,000 Hungarians within a few months. András and his
mother assumed false identities and, sheltered by friends,
survived the war. His father was taken to a forced labor
camp, but survived and was reunited with his family after
the war’s end.

ANDREW S. GROVE 143
The demise of the Nazi regime led to the creation of the

equally totalitarian Communist regime in Hungary. During
the ill-fated Hungarian revolution in 1956, András decided to
escape and, after a tortuous journey across Europe (detailed
in his captivating book Swimming Across: A Memoir; Warner
Books, 2001), landed in the United States in 1957, where he
anglicized his name to Andrew Stephen Grove. As he wrote
in his book,
By the time I was 20, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist

dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis’ “Final
Solution,” the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a
period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the
war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popu-
lar uprising that was put down at gunpoint . . . [where] many
young people were killed; countless others were interned.
Some 200,000 Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of
them.
In 1957 Andy also met Eva Kastan, an immigrant from

Austria; the two were married in 1958 and remained together
for the next 58 years.
Then began the education of one of America’s most influ-
ential citizens. Andy started with studies in chemical engi-
neering at City College of New York, where he received a
BS in 1960, followed in 1963 by a PhD from the University
of California, Berkeley, after which he joined Fairchild
Semiconductor R&D in Palo Alto. That is where he met
Gordon Moore, director of research and development. His
relationships with Gordon and Bob Noyce, two of the eight
cofounders of Fairchild, led to one of the greatest impacts on
technology and economy in history.
At Fairchild, known for the bipolar silicon technology
developed by Noyce, Moore, and the other “Fairchild 8,” Andy
started looking at the technology and properties of silicon–
silicon dioxide interfaces. His seminal work eventually led to
the commercial manufacture of metal oxide semiconductor
(MOS) devices, which became the workhorse devices of the
emerging silicon technology revolution.

When Andy joined the company it was making individual

transistors, and when he left in 1968 it was a pioneer in inte-
grated circuits (which Bob Noyce had coinvented). Equally
noteworthy, Gordon Moore had created a diagram, soon
to be labeled Moore’s Law, that became the driving force
for the semiconductor industry and remains valid today. Over
the next 45 years Andy had a major role in turning this predic-
tion of technology growth into reality.
His technical work and the publication of his first and
extremely popular book Physics and Technology of Semiconductor
Devices (Wiley, 1967), together with his acknowledged aggres-
sive behavior, led him, then assistant director of research at
Fairchild, to be selected to join Moore and Noyce when they
formed Intel Corp. in 1968 (he was employee #4; numbers 1–3
were Noyce, Moore, and Leslie Vadasz1).
Thus began Andy’s next journey, from technical research
scientist to manager and eventually CEO of what was for a
while considered the most important and valuable company in
the world. This transition from a fairly undisciplined research
scientist to a senior manager fundamentally impacted the role
of senior managers throughout Silicon Valley and the world
of technology enterprises, as Andy developed his manage-
ment philosophy and skills and implemented them, however
unpopular, through Intel and eventually through many Intel-
style management emulators.
Basically, although Andy’s first role was that of Intel’s direc-
tor of engineering, he quickly started to formulate what was to
become his management style, as described in his first mana-
gerial book, High Output Management (Random House, 1983).
In this book he champions a disciplined operation at Intel that
differed markedly from that of Fairchild and all the startup
companies that Fairchild birthed.
There were no executive dining rooms, Mahogany Rows,
or sacred parking places (everyone parked wherever they
could find a spot), and everyone—engineers, scientists, and
Les Vadasz escaped from Hungary at about the same time as Andy; the
1
two men were colleagues and the closest of friends for 53 years.

ANDREW S. GROVE 145
top management—was expected to show up on time (lead-

ing to the notorious “sign-in lists” that even Bob and Gordon
complied with). Floors, desks, and offices were expected to be
neat (the equally notorious Mr. Clean inspections were initi-
ated, where senior people at Intel would inspect every office,
lab nook, and cranny to ensure that the place was kept neat).
In fact, Intel’s winning the war of the PC over Apple was
probably a direct result of the 1973 slogan, “Intel Delivers.”
Andy’s corporatewide focus on discipline ensured that Intel
could meet market demands by meeting internal timetables
and schedules.
At the same time, sabbatical leave was provided for all
employees. And other management practices emerged, such
as the introduction of flexible, nonsolid walled offices with
no doors—“cubicles”; even Grove’s and Moore’s offices were
open, roughly 8′ by 9′ squares with furniture, computers, and
desks identical to those of all other employees. Cubicles could
be easily reconfigured to meet changing business and lab
space growth needs.
Intel was admittedly a demanding and stressful place to
work, but also an energetic, challenging, and thriving envi-
ronment where the senior management, from Bob, Gordon,
and Andy on down, were highly visible and easy to approach.
The Mr. Clean tours, for example, not only ensured discipline
throughout the company but also allowed workers who other
wise would never personally meet Andy, Gordon, Bob, or
other senior managers to talk with them on a periodic basis.
(There was a genuine love-hate response to the Mr. Clean
visits!) Many companies have copied Andy’s and Intel’s dis-
ciplined work style.
Technology was driven by support for innovation and
adherence to delivery—the EPROM, the conceptually new
microprocessor, the static RAM, the DRAM technologies—all
were encouraged and became hugely successful even though
highly risky. Andy’s earlier work on MOS technology paid off
in a big way, and Intel thrived and grew as no other company
in history. Moore’s Law required that Intel coordinate new
process technologies (scaling), new architectures (devices),

and new facilities (manufacturing) to turn out a product on a

given date; there was little latitude for failure.
Andy still had to make hard and often unpopular business
decisions. For example, in the face of emerging stiff Japanese
competition in the memory market he chose, against strong
opposition, to discontinue producing the solid-state memory
DRAM chips pioneered by Intel. These were the critical “test
devices” used to generate and debug new process technol-
ogy changes. The focus changed to using microprocessors;
their design was less structured and therefore more difficult to
use when evaluating a new process or design. As mentioned,
Intel’s success in getting IBM to continue to use Intel technolo-
gies led to the dominant role of microprocessors in the world’s
economy, one of the great success stories of the Information
Age.
Eventually, Bob Noyce left to become president of Sematech,
and Gordon moved on to chair the board. Andy assumed
the CEO position (he also continued to write books; Only the
Paranoid Survive [Doubleday Business, 1996] is probably his
most widely read book). In this position he was recognized
as the major driving force behind the emergence and growth
of Silicon Valley. Intel itself grew from a $3,000 gross reve-
nue company to a $30 billion company, whose logos—“Intel
Delivers” and later “Intel Inside”—were often regarded as the
most valuable in the world, exceeding those of Coca Cola and
IBM!
Andy was named Time Man of the Year in 1997. Many cor-
porate rivals became his greatest admirers. Included in that
list are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates; Bill and Microsoft were close
partners with Intel (often referred to as “Wintel”).
But another term was once used to describe Grove’s work
with or study of other companies’ processes: McDonald’s. The
fast-food restaurant’s french fries are made with identical pro-
cesses and materials, and Andy believed that principle should
be applied to the making of semiconductor chips (leading to
another Intel slogan, “Copy Exactly!”). Hence the relatively
unknown term, McIntel. There is even a rare photograph of
Andy emerging from a large “McIntel” hamburger box made

ANDREW S. GROVE 147
to look like an Intel device package! Although unpopular with

process development engineers, “Copy Exactly!” did ensure
that products manufactured at all Intel facilities were the same
and contributed enormously to the company’s profitability
and success.
While enjoying fame and reputation—numerous honors
and honorary doctorates that he had earned as a survivor, a
technologist, and a manager—another period of Andy’s life
began as he battled first prostate cancer and then Parkinson’s
disease. He left his position as CEO at Intel, but remained
active in other ways. He became chair of the board at Intel
and started teaching management and innovation courses at
Stanford University.
At the same time, he fought personally for his own health
and publicly to help anyone else with this disease, conferring
with doctors to suggest ways of defeating it. He used the same
discipline and detail orientation he had exercised at Intel, and
was acclaimed by the medical profession for his scientific
and disciplined approach. He offered advice to other cancer
victims.
Parkinson’s struck Andy in 2000, and he succumbed to it
after a 16-year struggle. But in spite of even this malady, he
maintained a rigorous and busy work and education sched-
ule. He traveled, consulted, taught, was interviewed, and
remained an icon of Silicon Valley to the very end.
He leaves behind his wife Eva, and two daughters and their
families, which include 8 grandchildren. And he leaves behind
a legend.
Andrew Grove, the man, has left us; but his technology, his
style, his ideas, his vision, his strength and inspiration live
on. As said at the beginning of this testament to Andy, there
are many people who are giants in their fields of expertise.
But there are few, very few, that become respected giants in
numerous domains. Andy Grove was one of these very rare
individuals.


GEORGE H. HEILMEIER
1936–2014
Elected in 1979
“Contributions to liquid crystal technology.”
BY NIM CHEUNG AND JACK HOWELL
G EORGE HARRY HEILMEIER, one of the most influential

technology leaders of our era, passed away on April 21, 2014,
in Plano, Texas, at the age of 77. His death was attributed to
complications from Alzheimer’s disease.
He was born May 22, 1936 in Philadelphia, the only child
of George and Anna Heilmeier. His father was a janitor, his
mother a homemaker. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln
High School and went on to earn his BS in electrical engineer-
ing from the University of Pennsylvania and his MSE, MA,
and PhD in solid state materials and electronics from Princeton
University.
Heilmeier is internationally recognized for his pioneering
work in 1964–1965 on electro-optic effects in liquid crystals,
performed at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, and his subse-
quent demonstration of the first working liquid crystal dis-
play (LCD). This breakthrough is the basis for the subsequent
developments, spanning five decades, that led to the billions
of LCD devices deployed today in products ranging from
digital clocks and calculators to flat panel TVs and computer
Adapted from “Tribute to George Heilmeier, Inventor of Liquid Crystal

Display, Former DARPA Director, and Industry Technology Leader,”

IEEE Communications Magazine, June 2014. © 2014 IEEE.
149

monitors, gaming devices, cameras, and smartphones. LCDs

are expected to become even more ubiquitous with the advent
of the Internet of Things, which is expected to have tens of
billions of interconnected computing devices over the next
couple of decades.
Equally important, but less well known to the general public,
are Heilmeier’s contributions as a research leader during his
tenures as director of the US Department of Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), senior executive at Texas
Instruments, and CEO of Bellcore (Telcordia Technologies).
He had the uncanny ability to spot key problem areas of great
importance in a research field.
He is famous among technology managers for the “Heilmeier
Catechism,” a set of questions he posed at DARPA for review-
ing new R&D projects or funding proposals. He continued to
use these questions as a management tool in his subsequent
positions. The philosophy has spread to numerous organiza-
tions in the United States and many other countries.
The Heilmeier Catechism

• What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives
using absolutely no jargon.
• How is it done today, and what are the limits of current
practice?
• What is new in your approach and why do you think it
will succeed?
• Who cares?
• If you are successful, what difference does it make?
• What are the risks and the payoffs?
• How much will it cost?
• How long will it take?
• What are the midterm and final “exams” to check the
success?
Heilmeier won numerous awards and accolades for his

invention of the LCD and as a research leader, including the
US National Medal of Science (1991), IEEE Medal of Honor

GEORGE H. HEILMEIER 151
(1997), and NAE Founders Award (1992) and Charles Stark

Draper Prize for Engineering (2012). He was also selected
for the IEEE David Sarnoff Award (1976) and Kyoto Prize in
Advanced Technology from the Inamori Foundation (2005),
among others.
He is survived by his wife of 52 years, the former Janet Faunce;
daughter Beth Heilmeier Jarvie; and three grandchildren.
Tribute by Bob Lucky

I first met George in 1967. He and I were the two runners-up
in the annual Eta Kappa Nu selection of the most outstand-
ing electrical engineer. George was then working at RCA and
had invented the LCD display technology. I had no idea how
important it was to become, nor how long it would take to
become so important. The next year George was selected for
the main honor of the most outstanding young engineer. That
was a very significant honor then, which was based not only
on technical achievement but on abilities and accomplish-
ments outside the technical area. The winners of that award
nearly always became famous engineers. (That became less
true in the decades to follow, and I think it is impossible today
to identify such exceptional young engineers.)
George went on to government positions and was appointed
director of DARPA at a time when technology was blossoming
with potential. Integrated circuits, the laser, and the Internet
were poised to change the world, and George was right there
with the vision and the funding to make it happen.
About this time I was a member of the Scientific Advisory
Board of the Air Force, and later became its chairman. George
was an active participant, and I renewed my acquaintance
with him.
After George left government he joined Texas Instruments,
and in 1992 I heard that he had been named the CEO of Bellcore.
I remember being thrilled that he would be moving to New
Jersey, and I hoped that he would be a neighbor. I had forgot-
ten that the headquarters of Bellcore was then in Livingston,
NJ, which was nowhere near my home.

In the summer of 1992 I was executive director of the com-

munications research division of Bell Labs. One day I received
a call from George, who wanted to have lunch with me. I had
a feeling that he was going to offer me a job, as the vice presi-
dent of research in Bellcore was retiring. However, I had no
intention of accepting an offer. I never thought that I could
leave Bell Labs. But as I left that lunch, I knew that my life had
been changed, and that I would join George at Bellcore.
I worked directly for and with George for some years. Once
again, George was where things were undergoing tectonic
shifts. The realities of the AT&T breakup were starting to set
in, and the funding model for Bellcore—a consortium of the
so-called Baby Bells—was about to disintegrate. Bellcore had
to be sold, and George was the person in charge. I remember
those months of meetings with potential buyers. George was
at his best in knowing the people and managing the process
of the sale.
George was easy to work for, and he had a knowledge and
affinity for research. He looked for vision, and was famous in
the company for his “catechism” of basic questions that every
project had to answer. I was always aware that mv boss knew
as much as I did about the work we did.
Of course, the sale of Bellcore ended George’s tenure as
CEO. This is usual and had been ordained from the start.
Bellcore became Telcordia Technologies and the research
division became increasingly funded through government
proposals.
I retired in 2002, but I wasn’t through seeing George—not
by a long shot. I joined the Defense Science Board—the half
dozen or so of the most respected defense scientists in the
country; George was a senior fellow of the board. In the years
to follow I had many meetings with him, and, freed from cor-
porate responsibilities, we had wide-ranging conversations.
One little reminiscence sticks particularly with me. Several
times George talked about playing baseball when he was
young. He was an infielder—maybe third base—and had aspi-
rations about playing at higher levels, maybe even the major
leagues. In my mind I see him at third base, hollering at the

players around him to get their game up, staring intently at

the batter and positioning himself based on the statistics of
that batter—a student of the game and so competitive that he
refuses to lose.
His life was like that.
Comments from Stu Personick

George had the ability to identify and articulate key problem
areas that were of great importance to the sponsors of applied
research and that were ripe for solution via innovative think-
ing and the innovative application of available and emerging
technologies.
Under his leadership, DARPA focused its strategy on six
overarching themes that were elegant in the simplicity with
which they were framed and the transparency of their pro-
spective impacts:
• Create an “invisible aircraft.”

• Make the oceans “transparent.”
• Create an agile, lightweight tank armed with a tank killer
“machine gun.”
• Develop new space-based surveillance and warning sys-
tems based on infrared focal plane arrays.
• Create command and control systems that adapt to the
commander instead of forcing the commander to adapt
to them.
• Increase the reliability of our vehicles by creating onboard
diagnostics and prognostics.
George had the ability to recognize the prospective, far-

reaching implications of a discovery such as the underly-
ing ferroelectric effects in liquid crystals, to create solutions
for important unmet market needs, and to follow through
on the applied research and development needed to turn a
new discovery into high-impact, marketable products [1, 2].
It is important to note that this follow-through includes the
ability to evolve the prospective application domain and the

underlying technology as the applied research and develop-

ment provide new scientific and market insights [3].
While at DARPA, George formulated a set of questions
for evaluating prospective/proposed research projects.
Discussions of those questions, and case studies using those
questions, should be part of any course on innovation and
incorporated into the practices of all committees that select
research projects for funding, all research program managers,
and all principal investigators conducting research projects.
Answers to all of these questions should be a mandatory sec-
tion of every research proposal submitted for funding and
every doctoral candidate’s thesis research proposal [4, 5].
Comments from Vincent Chan

George was a personal friend, and we spent a lot of time
together in the last few years working on Defense Science Board
studies and as members of other US government advisory
boards and committees. He was a person who had a very high
quality metric, and a nose for finding problem areas. He also
was not shy about letting the US government representatives/
sponsors of those boards and committees know the bad news
about their programs and initiatives, even if they didn’t want
to hear it. I am a strong supporter of the Heilmeier catechism
and I have preached it in my group and to others worldwide!
I think George’s courage to speak out under difficult situa-
tions is unique, and is something young people should emu-
late (with appropriate moderation and judgment).
Comments from Beth Heilmeier Jarvie

The real story of what undergirded all the contributions my
dad made, what made him “tick” and the thing that made
him unique and totally special, was his integrity, humil-
ity, and work ethic. He came from a poor neighborhood in
Philadelphia (no one in his family went past middle school)
but his parents instilled strong values in him. He lived a life
of gratitude to God for all the gifts he felt God had bestowed

on him (although by the world’s standards, he had nothing).

Even I did not know all the contributions he made until after
he died because he never spoke of his awards, honors, etc.
I could go on and on about my dad. As one of his friends, Jack
Woodmansee, said, my dad was a “national treasure” in many
ways.
References
[1]
Williams R, Heilmeier GH. 1966. Possible ferroelectric effects in liquid
crystals and related liquids. Journal of Chemical Physics 44:638–643.
[2]
Heilmeier GH, Zanoni LA, Barton LA. 1968. Dynamic scattering: A
new electrooptic effect in certain classes of nematic liquid crystals.
Proceedings of the IEEE 56(7):1162–1171.
[3]
http://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/george-heilmeier
[4]
www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1266274
[5]
http://datascientistinsights.com/2013/06/11/heilmeier-catechism-
nine-questions-to-develop-a-meaningful-data-science-project/


D AV I D G . H O A G
1925–2015
Elected in 1979
“Contributions and leadership in development of guidance and control systems

for the Polaris missile and the Apollo spacecrafts.”
BY NORMAN SEARS
D AVID GARRATT HOAG died January 19, 2015, at age

89. He was born October 11, 1925, in Boston to Alden Bomer
and Helen Lucy (née Garratt) Hoag. He grew up in Holliston,
Massachusetts, and in 1943 enlisted in the US Navy, which as-
signed him to its V-12 program at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. He continued at MIT after World War II and
graduated with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical
and instrumentation engineering.
He then spent his entire career at the MIT Instrumentation
Laboratory, which became the C.S. Draper Laboratory in 1973.
During his more than 50 years—as a design and systems engi-
neer, senior advisor, and consultant—he made many very
significant contributions to the laboratory’s design responsi-
bilities for several national programs involving defense and
space technologies. Dave earned and enjoyed a reputation
as one of the laboratory’s most outstanding engineering and
management talents.
He worked on Navy fire control system designs that fol-
lowed the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory’s involvement in
successful designs for World War II fire control development.
These early fire control programs established a recognized
design capability and a feasible contracting arrangement
between government, university, and industry for large
157

national defense programs. This contracting and design capa-

bility was to set a pattern for the laboratory’s future involve-
ment in several programs of national importance with big
technical challenges.
Dave’s early design contributions were to advanced fire
control systems sponsored by the Navy and Air Force. A spe-
cialized element of the general fire control problem is inertial
guidance and navigation for long-range ballistic missiles. The
Instrumentation Laboratory was a leader in the development
of inertial guidance and participated in several ballistic missile
programs.
One nationally important inertial guidance system devel-
opment led by the laboratory was the Polaris Fleet Ballistic
Missile program. Dave was the chief technical design engineer
and program manager for this four-year program, which cul-
minated in the successful launch of two Polaris A1 missiles
from the submerged USS George Washington (SSBN-598) off
Florida on July 20, 1960. This was a remarkable research and
development effort involving Navy, university, and industry
partners for the successful design of a major defense system.
The USS George Washington began the nation’s first strategic
deterrent patrol, carrying 1,200-nautical-mile-range Polaris
missiles in November 1960.
Dave often said that being the chief technical director of the
Polaris inertial guidance system was a career dream for him. It
turned out that July 20 was to become an even more important
date for him later in the decade.
In 1961 NASA awarded the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory
the first contract on the Apollo program to design and verify
a self-contained guidance and navigation (G&N) system for
spacecraft to land humans on the moon and return them to
Earth. Dave was designated chief technical director and pro-
gram manager to lead the effort, essentially the same role he
had played for the Polaris program.
The G&N system consisted of an inertial measurement
unit, optical alignment telescope and space sextant, and digi-
tal guidance computer. System weight and schedule limits
were driving factors in its development. As a result, new

DAVID G. HOAG 159
technology development was minimized. Inertial and optical

designs were well established at the time, but digital comput-
ing for real-time applications was in its infancy. The Apollo
G&N computer would be one of the first to use transistor inte-
grated circuits that were just beginning to be manufactured.
Weight limitations dictated that the G&N system be a single-
string system rather than a redundant one. Component reli-
ability was therefore a major program design and cost driver.
During the development phase of the system the labora-
tory was asked to integrate the flight control systems for both
the Command and Lunar Modules as digital designs, and the
G&N system became the GN&C system. This required sig-
nificant additional design and verification. Dave directed the
development of the system through prototype demonstration
and verification tests to validate system performance.
The Apollo program extended the laboratory’s design and
support effort further than previous programs, in several
areas that required significant technical and managerial sup-
port. The laboratory was responsible for the programming and
test verification of both Command and Lunar Module GN&C
computer programs for each Apollo mission. Over the course
of the program this involved 12 missions of which 6 landed on
the moon. The development of both digital and hybrid simula-
tors was also a major part of this effort for software verification.
Moreover, the GN&C system was one of the more complex
systems the flight crews had to work with throughout the mis-
sion, and extensive crew training support on system operation
became an additional requirement. This crew involvement
then extended into real-time flight support, which became
very important in resolving system and mission issues on the
Apollo 11, 13, and 14 missions.
Dave’s role and leadership over the 12 years of the Apollo
program were important and involved outstanding achieve-
ments of which he and the laboratory can be very proud. The
successful Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20, 1969, was a
crowning achievement—echoing the first successful Polaris
launch on July 20, 1960. Dave had a remarkable nine-year
period of professional achievement.

After the Apollo program, Dave headed an advanced

design and development group supporting the Space Defense
Initiative effort for missile defense. This undertaking involved
some of the most advanced technology at the laboratory in the
areas of precision pointing and tracking for directed energy
weapons and space-based surveillance, and required very
senior and experienced designers. The effort required a leader
of Dave Hoag’s caliber, which he consistently displayed over
many years.
Recognized both nationally and internationally as an out-
standing engineer and technical leader, Dave received the
Col. Thomas L. Thurlow Award (1969) from the Institute
of Navigation, NASA Public Service Award (1969), Navy
Certificate of Merit (1970), and in 1972 he and Richard Battin
were presented with the Louis W. Hill Space Transportation
Award (now called the Goddard Astronautics Award) from
the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
He also represented the laboratory at the Pugwash
Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which started sur-
veys for nuclear disarmament. His highest personal award
was probably the respect and reputation he had from fellow
design engineers over a very broad range of important pro-
grams. They all recognized and appreciated his technical
capability for system design and development, coupled with a
very effective operating style.
For all his outstanding accomplishments, David Hoag was
a family man. Shortly after his marriage to Grace Griffith in
1952 they bought an 1800 house with lots of land. He built a
two-car garage, workshop, and large porch. He had a pond
dug for swimming, skating, and boating—and to provide
a home for lots of frogs and fish and turtles. He also raised
sheep, chicken, and bees. He had a tennis court built and of
course there was room for basketball and baseball. It was a
wonderful home to raise his five children and continues to be
enjoyed by his grandchildren and great-granddaughter.
Much of the land is wooded and he made paths through
it. Residents remember his guided walks for third-graders
and their families who were working on a school leaf project.

DAVID G. HOAG 161
He loved to relate interesting lore about the plants and ani-

mals that lived on his property, much of which will be pre-
served in perpetuity. Dave had a lifelong interest in natural
resources and the environment. He was a charter member of
the Medway Open Space Committee, for which he compiled
many maps and the original catalogue of open spaces. He was
also a board member of the Upper Charles Conservation Land
Trust.
David and Grace also bought some land in Vermont with
a former church on it for a vacation spot. He did not do a
lot of remodeling because the family was there to enjoy the
mountains.
He also had an appreciation for human cultures. He and
Grace traveled to Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. In
sharing programs between engineers they visited the Soviet
Union, Taiwan, and Scotland, and they hosted visitors from
those countries in their home. Dave loved exotic food—and
enjoyed cooking Chinese meals—as well as traditions and art
from cultures around the world.
Dave was especially proud of his large family, whom he
and Grace hosted each week at Sunday morning breakfast, an
event started by Dave’s parents when he was a boy. It con-
tinues still, and relatives, friends, and guests are always wel-
come. The family also hosted an annual Strawberry Shortcake
Sunday for their many friends. Gatherings at the Hoag house
always include a walk along a path known as “Papa’s woodsy
walk,” which winds through the woods behind the house.
Dave is survived by his wife Grace; children Rebecca Hoag
Atwood (Paul), Peter Griffith Hoag (Sarah Vincent-Hoag),
Jeffrey Taber Hoag (Mary Clare Bergen), Nicholas Alden Hoag,
and Lucy Hoag Peltier (Leonard); grandchildren Benjamin
Emery Atwood, Julia Atwood Golebiewski (John), Caitlin
Hoag Caswell (Bryan), Noah Janson Hoag, Chloe Griffith
Hoag, Leah Frances Hoag, David Edward Peltier, and Thomas
Jeffrey Peltier; and great-grandchildren Evelyn Grace Caswell
and Coleman William Caswell.


JOHN H. HORLOCK
1928–2015
Elected in 1988
“For distinguished contributions to knowledge of the thermodynamics and fluid

dynamics of gas turbines, and for innovations in engineering education.”
DANIEL WEINBREN
S IR JOHN HAROLD HORLOCK died May 22, 2015, at age 87.

He revolutionized transportation through his significant contri-
butions to aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, and energy and the
development of gas turbines. By describing the detailed air flow
in turbines and compressors in mathematical terms he paved
the way for greater efficiency in jet engine design.
Born April 19, 1928, John Horlock grew up in Winchmore
Hill, north London, with his older sister Beryl and their par-
ents, Harold Edgar and Olive Margaret Horlock. His father
ran an undertaking firm, Blake and Horlock, in Edmonton.
His mother, the third child of Christian Kissner, was born in
Kassel, Germany, whence the family had emigrated in the
1880s.
Starting in 1939 John attended the Latymer School in
Edmonton. Due to a leg injury he was not required to serve
in the armed forces. Instead, with a scholarship to St. John’s
College, Cambridge, he read for the mechanical sciences
tripos. It was here that he became interested in gas turbines,
won the Rex Moir Prize (awarded to the examination candi-
date who demonstrated the greatest distinction in engineer-
ing), and obtained a First Class degree.
After graduation he worked as a design engineer for Rolls-
Royce (1949–1951), where he contributed to the redesign of
163

the compressor. After a year’s sabbatical at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, Rolls-Royce funded his return to
Cambridge and provided an axial compressor rig for his use.
Back at the university he taught engineering, worked for his
PhD, and studied three-dimensional compressor design.
In 1958, at age 30, he was appointed Harrison Professor of
Mechanical Engineering at the University of Liverpool. That
year also saw the publication of his first book, Axial Flow
Compressors Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, and in 1966
he followed up with Axial Flow Turbines (both published by
Butterworths Scientific Publications). While at Liverpool he
also edited a series of books on thermodynamics and fluid
mechanics for engineers, and became head of the Mechanical
Engineering Department.
In 1967 he returned to Cambridge where he held a chair
and became deputy head of the Department of Engineering,
which had nearly 1,000 students and a teaching staff of about
100. In addition, he chaired the Mechanical Engineering
Committee of the Science Research Council, the UK agency
that from 1965 to 1981 was in charge of publicly funded sci-
entific research activities. He gained Science Research Council
funds for a turbo machinery research laboratory in Cambridge
that became the Whittle Laboratory. He was its first director
and, in 1973, the laboratory’s extension was named after him.
From 1974 to 1981 he was vice chancellor of Salford
University, a relatively small technology-focused institution.
He acquired the task of administering a government funding
cut of 40 percent over three years.
He went on to a decade-long appointment as vice chancel-
lor of the Open University (1981–1990). This relatively new
and distinctive institution provided for students who wished
to study part-time and without travelling to a campus. As only
the second person to hold this post he consolidated the status
of the university by helping to ensure the success of a 1985
visit from an influential critic, Secretary of State for Education
Sir Keith Joseph.
His experience dealing with government bodies proved
useful, as he noted when he compared the post to his previous

JOHN H. HORLOCK 165
one: “the civil servants liked to have their fingers in the Open
University pie, whereas I hardly saw a civil servant in all
my time at Salford.” There were also savings to be made in
the new post. The capital grant from the UK government
was halved in real terms the year after his arrival, and there
were further cuts in subsequent years. Nevertheless, he was
able to strengthen science and engineering at the university,
ensure the introduction of a postgraduate master’s program,
and oversee the opening of the Open Business School and the
expansion of the university into Western Europe. While vice
chancellor he maintained his interest in turbomachinery and
thermodynamic cycles and continued to publish papers.
At the end of his term he did not seek reappointment but
retired in 1990 at age 62. He felt that the university was “no
longer a strange new immature organization, but a massive
national resource, with a high international reputation.” Long
after he left the university he lived nearby and supported the
establishment of similar institutions in many countries.
The Open University named a building in his honor in
1989. In addition, during his tenure he was known as “the stu-
dents’ vice chancellor,” and in 1991 the Association of Open
University Graduates established the Sir John Horlock Award
for Science.
In retirement he published on gas turbines and com-
bined cycles, notably an account tracing the history of
combined cycle plants to the early part of the 20th cen-

tury: Combined Power Plants: Including Combined Cycle

Gas Turbine (CCGT) Plants (Pergamon Press, 1992). His
Cogeneration—Combined Heat and Power (CHP): Thermodynamics
and Economics (Krieger Publishing, 1996) introduced numer-
ous aspects of the topic and compared the performance of
CHP plants to that of conventional plants.
In 1990 he became the first chair of the Aerothermal Panel,
an advisory body to Rolls-Royce, and rejoined the Whittle
Laboratory. In addition to his academic career he was an
advisor to British government and industry for decades. He
was a board member at the National Grid; from 1979, chair
of the Aeronautical Research Council, which provided advice

to the Ministry of Defense and the Department of Industry;

and chair of the advisory committee on the Safety of Nuclear
Installations (1984–1993).
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society “for services
to science, education, and engineering” in 1976 and served
as its vice president (1981–1983) and treasurer (1992). He was
also a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, American
Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Institution of
Mechanical Engineers, and was elected a foreign associate
of the US National Academy of Engineering in 1988. He was
an honorary fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and in
1996 was knighted for services to science, engineering, and
education.
In 1969 he was awarded, together with R. Ivan Lewis, the
annual Thomas Hawksley Gold Medal, for their paper “Flow
Disturbances Due to Blade Thickness in Turbomachines.” In
1997 he received ASME’s R. Tom Sawyer Award in recogni-
tion of his contributions to advancing the purpose of the gas
turbine industry and to the International Gas Turbine Institute
over a substantial period of time. In 2001 he was selected for
the Institute of Civil Engineers’ James Alfred Ewing Medal in
recognition of his meritorious contributions to the science of
engineering in the field of research.
He received honorary awards from many universities:
Heriot-Watt University (1980), Salford (1981), East Asia
(Macau; 1985), Liverpool (1986), Coventry (1991), de Montfort
(1995), and Cranfield (1997). He became a fellow of the Open
University in 1991. He was also an honorary fellow of St. John’s
College (1989) and of the University of Manchester Institute of
Science and Technology (1991), as well as prochancellor of the
latter (1995–2001).
His contributions went beyond those made at govern-
mental or institutional levels. As recalled by John Young, the
Hopkinson and ICI Professor of Applied Thermodynamics
at the University of Cambridge, John Horlock “maintained a
strong interest in the personal welfare of students, young aca-
demics, and not-so-young academics. Many have cause to be
grateful for his kindness, generosity, and support.”

JOHN H. HORLOCK 167
As a schoolboy John Horlock had a soccer trial with the

Tottenham Hotspur Juniors and remained a keen follower of
the senior club. He also loved cricket and a variety of types of
music.
While living in Edmonton John met Sheila Joy Stutely.
They were married June 8, 1953. John is survived by Lady
Sheila Horlock, daughters Alison Heap and Jane Spencer,
son Tim Horlock, and eight grandchildren.


RIK HUISKES
1944–2010
Elected in 2005
“For advancing the understanding of how bone prostheses

affect the functioning of the living human skeleton.”
BY VAN C. MOW AND BERT VAN RIETBERGEN
HENDRIK WILLEM JAN (RIK) HUISKES, a guiding force in

the development of biomechanics and bioengineering of bone
and prosthesis studies, died December 24, 2010, at the age of 66.
He was a leader in the development of bone and joint prosthesis
biomechanics in Europe and the United States.
Rik was born in Eindhoven on December 18, 1944, during
the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944–January 25, 1945).
A few months earlier, Eindhoven was at the center of the com-
bined Allied military expedition “Market Garden” (September
17–27, 1944), during which the cities of Eindhoven, Nijmegen,
and Arnhem suffered major damage.
He attended the Eindhoven University of Technology
(TUE) and in 1979 earned his PhD, with his thesis “Some fun-
damental aspects of human joint replacement,” published by
Acta Orthopaedica in 1980 in Lund, Sweden.
One of the earliest PhD bioengineers in Europe, he moved to
Nijmegen as vice chair for research of the Clinical Department
of Orthopaedics and director of the orthopaedic laboratory of
the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of Nijmegen.
Although the university had no engineering departments, he
gained not only vital knowledge and experience in collaborative
research but also the respect of his clinical and medical colleagues.
To enhance his medical and surgical background, he spent
169

two sabbatical years, first at the Department of Orthopaedic

Surgery at the Mayo Clinic (1980–1981) and later at the bio
engineering laboratory (1992–1993) at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. He further developed his ideas about
bone remodeling, which crystalized into a new hypothesis
described in a coauthored paper published in Nature in 2000.1
He returned to TUE in 2000 to take a leading role in the
newly formed Department of Biomedical Engineering, and
from 2005 until his death in 2010 he held the Royal Dutch
Academy of Science Professorship. Bioengineering had gained
major interest among many graduate students who wished to
pursue a master’s and/or PhD degree working on important
musculoskeletal and orthopaedic surgery problems. With his
pioneering efforts, Rik attracted and guided 90 engineering
graduate students and visiting and postdoctoral fellows, and
collaborated with many faculty at TUE and beyond. The grad-
uate students and postdocs have successfully gone on to major
faculty positions in Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland,
Japan, and the United States.
He served for 30 years as editor in chief of the Journal of
Biomechanics, an international journal affiliated with the
American Society of Biomechanics (ASB), the European
Society of Biomechanics (ESB), and other biomechanics soci-
eties worldwide. He was also president of the ESB, found-
ing member and president of the European Orthopaedic
Research Society (EORS), member of the Scientific Committee
of the European Space Agency, and secretary general of the
International Society of Biomechanics. For these and his many
other contributions and achievements, the ESB in 2012 named
the Huiskes Medal for Biomechanics in his honor.
Rik was a natural leader with both strong technical abili-
ties and a great sense of humor. He is survived by his wife,
Trine Sand Kaastad, MD, PhD, of Oslo, daughters Sabine and
Suzanne, and son Willem-Frederik.
1
Huiskes R, Ruimerman R, van Lenthe GH, Janssen JD. 2000. Effects of
mechanical forces on maintenance and adaptation of form in trabecular
bone. Nature 405:704–706. Available at www.nature.com/nature/
journal/v405/n6787/full/405704a0.html.



JAMES D. IDOL, JR.

1928–2015
Elected in 1986
“For the invention of ammoxidation processes and catalysts,

and for major contributions to the plastics industry.”
BY FLOYD T. NETH
J AMES DANIEL IDOL, JR. died July 15, 2015, at the age of 86.
He was born August 7, 1928, in Harrisonville, Missouri, where
he grew up. His father, James D. Idol, Sr., one of seven children,
was mayor, and his mother, Gladys, was a high school teacher.
Jim attended public schools and graduated from
Harrisonville High School in 1946. He enrolled in William
Jewell College, where he studied chemistry under Frank G.
Edson, receiving his AB in 1949. He then went to graduate
school at Purdue University, where he pursued his interest in
industrial chemistry under Earl T. McBee. He received his MS
in organic chemistry in 1952 and stayed to earn his PhD in
1955 with a major in organic chemistry and a minor in chemi-
cal engineering.
Upon completion of his graduate studies he took a job at
Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) as a senior chemist, working with
other researchers to develop chemicals for commercial enter-
prise. In 1957 he invented an economical single-step process for
the manufacture of acrylonitrile, the key ingredient in acrylic
fibers used to make clothing; shatter-proof plastic bottles, com-
puter, automobile, and food casings; and sports equipment.
The process was commercialized in 1960 by Sohio and is now
used in chemical plants throughout the world. Soon thereafter a
plant for producing acrylonitrile was established in Lima, Ohio.
173

Jim then turned his attention to creating commercially

useful derivatives of acrylonitrile. He was research supervisor
of the group that discovered and developed the process for the
commercialization of Barex packaging plastics, now used for
packaging processed foods, drugs, household products, and
chemicals.
By the time he left Sohio, he had completed projects in R&D
long-range planning, technology assessment and forecasting,
foreign licensing support work, and research contract negotia-
tion. He had risen through the ranks from research associate
(1959) to research supervisor (1962), project leader (1965), and
research manager (1965–1977).
When Sohio was purchased by British Petroleum in 1977
Jim was hired by Ashland Chemical as research manager to
lead a newly formed department in the R&D division. He was
promoted to vice president for venture research and develop-
ment in 1979. Combining his management skills with scientific
research, he built the group into a corporate R&D division of
150 staff and a budget of $15.5 million. At Ashland he devel-
oped the propylene–carbon monoxide process for the manu-
facture of methyl methacrylate.
In 1988 he left industry to join the faculty of Rutgers
University as Professor II of ceramics and director of the
Center for Packaging Science and Engineering. He retired as
professor emeritus in about 1995.
Dr. Idol published 59 scientific papers and received 122 US
and foreign patents. He was a leader in professional organiza-
tions: American Chemical Society (ACS), chair, Industrial and
Engineering Division; American Management Association
(AMA), Research and Development Council; Industrial
Research Institute, chair, Board of Editors; American Institute
of Chemists, chair of the board; and member of the American
Institute of Chemical Engineers, Society of Plastics Engineers,
and the Plastics Industry Association. He served on numer-
ous government committees and councils including the
National Science Foundation Council for Chemical Research
Government Affairs Committee and the advisory board for
the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

JAMES D. IDOL, JR. 175
He was the recipient of a long list of honors: the Modern

Pioneer Award, National Association of Manufacturers (1965);
Chemical Pioneer Award, American Institute of Chemists
(AIC) (1968); Citation for Achievement, William Jewell
College (1971); ACS Joseph P. Stewart Distinguished Service
Award (1974) and Creative Invention Award (1975); Special
Merit Award, Sohio Board of Directors (1976); AIC Life Fellow
(1978); Perkin Medal, Society of Chemical Industry (American
Section) (1979); honorary doctor of science, Purdue University
(1980); F.G. Ciapetti Award and Lectureship, Catalysis Society
of North America (1988); Rutgers University Diploma of
Recognition, Distinguished/Named Chairs (1991); and AMA
Council Service Award (1994). He was elected to the National
Academy of Engineering (1986) and named a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1988).
ACS designated the Sohio Acrylonitrile Process a National
Historic Chemical Landmark at BP Chemicals Inc. in
Warrensville Heights, Ohio, on September 13, 1996, and at
INEOS in League City, Texas, on November 14, 2007.
My friendship with Jim Idol began when we both enrolled in
William Jewell College and majored in chemistry. He preceded
me by a quarter and was an active member in Phi Gamma
Delta fraternity when I became a pledge in the fall of 1946. Our
friendship blossomed when we were together in Quantitative
Analysis our second year. We used to “break in” to work in the
lab after hours: We would leave a window unlocked so that
we could climb out on the ledge, open the window, and get
into the lab. Thus began our serious dedication to chemistry,
which only increased as we progressed through organic and
physical chemistry.
I lived on a farm and commuted five miles to college. On
one occasion a blizzard made it unsafe for me to drive home.
Jim kindly shared his dormitory room with me for the night
and even loaned me his razor the next morning with a fresh
Gillette Blue Blade. It converted me from an electric shaver to
a safety razor.
After receiving our PhDs, he at Purdue and I at Ohio State,
we communicated periodically by telephone. After Jim moved

to Rutgers University we spoke several times about working

together on converting methane to motor fuels but time ran
out before we could do more than theorize.
In 1995 on a visit to Russia, I connected with scientists at the
St. Petersburg State University. This led to organizing Russian-
American Technology Associates Inc. to develop with Russian
physicists a medical device for treating degenerative diseases.
Jim served as an advisory board member until 2005.
On more than one occasion Jim told me that I was his best
friend. What an honor to have been the best friend of such a
talented and respected individual!
His brother-in-law, Hale Montgomery, remembers:
Growing up in Harrisonville, Missouri, on the western edge of

the state, Jim showed early signs of his later illustrious career
in chemistry. According to family history, Jim spent many
hours with a beginner’s chemistry set—a childhood birthday
gift from a neighbor—in the basement of the Idol home on
West Washington St., a house sometimes filled with strange
odors from below.
But chemistry became his big draw later.
The Idol family owned the local newspaper, the Cass County
Democrat Missourian. It was only natural that Jim would follow
family tradition. Thus, at age 10, he and two buddies estab-
lished The Home Weekly, a gossipy four-pager, circulation about
100, that elicited some angry phone calls to the Idol household.
“You’d be surprised at what kind of news a 10-year-old can
pick up around the dinner table,” Jim said in a 1970s interview
with John F. Hanahan, senior editor of Chemical & Engineering
News.
I relished his visits to our house in Arlington, VA, where his
sister Carol (Idol) Montgomery and I lived. He always came
bearing a gift bottle of fine cognac. After a sibling “Jimmie
Dan and Carol Sue” talk, he would head for the piano, where
he would bang out Broadway show tunes and classics with
gusto—and “in any key you can name,” he once offered.
He also had a fine bass voice that he earlier put to use in
Cleveland’s oldest musical group, the Singers’ Club, a men’s
chorus with a wide repertoire, such as drinking songs, concert
pieces, carols, and other fare.

JAMES D. IDOL, JR. 177
My brother-in-law—beyond his singular, ground-break-

ing, award-winning, professional achievements—was a great
friend, very warm and human, a talented man with a robust
sense of humor. We all love him, and miss him.
His niece Patricia wrote:
Uncle Jim was the most wonderful gorilla chemist I ever knew.
I couldn’t wait for him to visit when I was a little girl. After he
greeted everyone with bear hugs, he’d drop down on all fours
and play gorilla, complete with ape-like grunts.
As the years progressed, I had a vague feeling that he was
pretty famous. I remember staying at the Plaza Hotel in NYC
in 1979 when he won the Perkins Award. As I grew up and
learned more about his professional career, I was truly awed.
In effect, Uncle Jim and his colleagues changed the world;
not just the plastics and packaging industry but the world!
That’s brilliance, but he’d never tell you. He understated his
accomplishments and never strayed too far from his humble
Missouri roots.
When I lived in Los Angeles at age 22, he treated me to a
rare five-star dinner complete with a bottle of Rothschild wine.
He joked in the elevator on the way down: “Patsy, I think the
maître d’ thought I was your sugar daddy!” I laughed and
said, “No you’re just my famous gorilla chemistry uncle!”
His niece Anne commented:
As a girl, I thought Uncle Jim was hilarious. He was a clown,

as Trish says—the uncle who grunted when he saw you and
circled around you bent over in an excellent imitation of a
gorilla, but one with black hair, shiny shoes, and a coat and tie!
He loved big cars, a good scotch-and-water, and immensely
enjoyed playing the piano.
He was well read, though almost totally in science, and
thought that what I was interested in as I grew up—liberal
arts—was a bit odd. He loved to talk, and loved company,
and was a generous person. His laugh is one that sticks in my
memory—gentle, and frequent, and he had a genuine old-
fashioned sense of courtesy.


DONALD G. ISELIN
1922–2012
Elected in 1980
“Innovative leadership in planning and meeting civil engineering

challenges of great importance to the nation.”
BY THE NAVAL FACILITIES ENGINEERING COMMAND STAFF

Rear Admiral DONALD GROTE ISELIN, 89, died March 9,

2012, in Santa Barbara, where he lived for 24 years.
Born September 5, 1922, in Racine, Wisconsin, to Harry and
Rose Iselin, Admiral Iselin attended Marquette University
for two years before enrolling in the United States Naval
Academy, where he graduated at the top of his class in 1945
and promptly wed his high school sweetheart, Jacqueline
Mary Myers, on June 9. Married 63 years before she passed
away in July 2008, they had four children: Karen Maureen
Iselin (deceased), Donna Iselin Broom, Michael Iselin, and
Madeline Iselin Morici (deceased). He is also survived by
eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Admiral Iselin served aboard the USS Providence at the end
of World War II as part of the Mediterranean Occupation Forces
before his selection to the Civil Engineer Corps. After earn-
ing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he completed the Advanced
Management Program at Harvard Business School and served
the US Navy in positions of increasing responsibility until May
1977, when he assumed duties as Commander, Naval Facilities
Engineering Command, and Chief of Civil Engineers.
As a leading engineer he oversaw major projects such as the
design and construction of the nation’s first large-scale nuclear
179

power plant for producing electricity, and a water desalina-

tion plant in Guantanamo Bay when Fidel Castro terminated
the Navy’s water supply. He was a technical advisor for Navy
construction projects during the atom bomb tests at Eniwetok
(now Enewetak). He earned a reputation as an innovator who,
under hostile military conditions in Vietnam, implemented a
new system of construction called “level of effort,” still in use
by the Navy.
He was a registered engineer in the District of Columbia,
past president of the Society of American Military Engineers
(SAME), commissioner of the American Section, Permanent
International Association of Navigation Congresses, and
member of the board of directors for a number of organizations.
Among his numerous awards were USNA’s Gardner L.
Caskey Memorial Prize, the SAME 1958 Moreell Medal, the
Navy Commendation Medal, the Navy League’s Stephen
Decatur Award, and four Legion of Merit awards. He
also received the 1980 Engineering Alumni Professional
Achievement Award from Marquette University. In addition
to his election to the NAE, he was an honorary member of the
American Institute of Architects.
Upon retiring from the US Navy in 1981, he joined Raymond
Kaiser Engineering as a group vice president for construction,
design, finance, and personnel. He retired 5 years later and
spent the next 15 years working as an independent manage-
ment and construction consultant. Well into his later years he
remained professionally active, including serving as a senior
member of a panel overseeing construction activity for major
projects at three nuclear power laboratories.
To the world he was Admiral Iselin, but to family he was
“Buddy,” always ready to help fix a balky air conditioner,
repair potholes in the family driveway, or roar with laughter
as he read Winnie the Pooh stories to grandchildren. He is best
remembered seated at the head of the dinner table, transform-
ing a mundane trip for pizza into a side-splitting epic adven-
ture that ended with a valuable lesson for those paying close
enough attention.


Gabriel Moulin Studio, San Francisco

J . D O N O VA N J A C O B S
1908–2000
Elected in 1969
“Contributions to the science and art of tunnel construction through

the invention of the tunnel sliding floor for rapid excavation.”
BY WILLIAM W. EDGERTON
J OSEPH DONOVAN JACOBS, a leader and innovator in the

underground construction industry, died August 26, 2000, at
the age of 91.
Born on Christmas Eve 1908 in the small town of Motley,
Minnesota, Don was the son of a bank manager and former
schoolteacher. He graduated from high school at the age of 15
and, too young to start college, took a job with the local tele-
phone company. Demonstrating the initiative that would char-
acterize him throughout his life, he installed phones, collected
delinquent accounts, and substituted on the switchboard. In
the evenings he worked as a radio salesman, calling on local
residents to demonstrate the battery-powered receivers that
represented the cutting-edge technology of the day.
At age 17 he enrolled in Saint John’s University in
Collegeville, MN, where he spent two years and gained a
solid foundation in the humanities. In 1927 he moved to
Minneapolis, where he spent the next six years alternating
between college and work. When he graduated from the
University of Minnesota in 1934 with a BS in civil engineering,
the Depression was in full force, and of the 52 aspiring engi-
neers in his class, only five, whose fathers headed contracting
or engineering firms, had prospects for employment.
183

With little to go on but his own motivation, Don landed a

job driving a truck to the construction site of the Fort Peck Dam
in eastern Montana. Once on-site he parlayed his presence into
an office job and, eventually, engineering responsibilities for
the joint venture of Mason and Walsh, the firm responsible
for the diversion runnels and control shafts. Having proven
his engineering skills, the work connection stuck. Walsh and
Walsh-sponsored joint ventures kept Don employed for the
next 17 years.
In 1937 Don married Virginia O’Meara, whom he met while
working in Montana. The two settled into a company cottage
while Don worked on an industrial water supply project for
the city of Birmingham in Alabama. With the conclusion of
this project, the young couple settled in New York, where Don
served as a field engineer for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and
then as a designer of special construction equipment on the
Delaware Aqueduct. This was followed by a stint as an esti-
mator in Walsh’s New York office. Don was rounding out his
experience as an engineer.
During World War II Don was a buyer of heavy equipment
for the construction of a US airbase in Trinidad, West Indies.
He also designed special equipment for a Jersey City shipyard
of Walsh-Steers, which entailed building landing craft for the
US Navy. In 1943 he was transferred to Cleveland to serve
as district engineer for the construction of priority wartime
bridges and docks.
After the war ended, Don was appointed district engineer
for Walsh in San Francisco. From 1947 to 1954 he worked on 11
dams and large tunnels in the western United States. In 1954
he was appointed chief engineer on the construction of two
dams and 15 miles of large tunnels on Australia’s landmark
Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme for the joint venture
of Kaiser-Walsh-Perini-Raymond (KWPR). Before accepting
the assignment in Australia, Don told his employers of his
desire to start his own consulting practice in San Francisco,
and together they negotiated a contract that allowed him to
return to San Francisco once the project was under way.
In midsummer of 1955 Don returned from Australia and

J. DONOVAN JACOBS 185
hung out his shingle as a consulting construction engineer.

His first client was his former employer, KWPR. A year later,
in December 1956, having attracted a nucleus of capable engi-
neers, he incorporated Jacobs Associates.
In 1959 he conceived and patented the Jacobs Sliding Floor,
also known as the “Magic Carpet.” This self-propelled trackway
system significantly increased efficiency in drill-and-blast hard
rock tunneling methods when drill jumbos, mucking machines,
and muck cars were rail-mounted. The Sliding Floor sped up
the switching of muck cars behind the mucking machine, and
moved the rail-mounted drill jumbo and mucking machine in
and out from the tunnel face—eliminating the time-consuming
and labor-intensive job of laying track at the tunnel face for
each round of excavation. Equipped with a semiautomatic track
magazine that placed full-length haulage track at the rear of the
floor on a well-compacted invert, the method simultaneously
saved labor costs and provided better track.
Don not only personally performed professional engineer-
ing services throughout the world but also served as a con-
sultant or member of a consulting board to owner entities on
an impressive variety of public works, such as the Oroville
Dam, Berkeley Hills Tunnel, Crystal Springs Tunnel, and
San Fernando Tunnel, all in California; Honolulu’s Wilson
Tunnel; Litani River Project, Lebanon; continued work on
Australia’s Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme; Seattle’s
Metropolitan Sewer Tunnels; Churchill Falls Hydroelectric
Project, Labrador; Sea Level Canal Board, Panama; Arizona
Power Commission; Libby Dam Railroad Tunnel, Montana;
and City Water Tunnel Number Three, New York.
In addition, he excelled as an inventor of construction
equipment, and authored numerous technical articles as well
as a chapter on “Some Tunnel Failures and What They Have
Taught” in Hazards in Tunnelling and on Falsework (Institution
of Civil Engineers [ICE], 1975). He also coauthored the AIME
Underground Mining Methods Handbook (Society of Mining
Engineers of AIME, ed. W.A. Hustrulid; 1982).
Don made significant contributions to underground
engineering for many years and was a recognized leader in

the industry. He was a member or fellow of the American

Society of Civil Engineers, American Institute of Mining and
Metallurgical Engineers, Australian Institute of Engineers,
and National Society of Professional Engineers.
In recognition of his many accomplishments, in 1969 he
was elected to the NAE, and in 1980 the Beavers, a national
organization of construction contractors, awarded him the
Golden Beaver Award for engineering. The following year
he was awarded The Moles annual nonmember Award for
Outstanding Achievement in Construction, in recognition of
his “Contributions to Tunnel Design and Construction and his
Innovations in Tunnelling Practices which have brought him
Worldwide Acclaim.”
Don left an important legacy to his now 60-year-old com-
pany: a stable foundation for growth and a set of lasting
values. In its new incarnation—McMillen Jacobs Associates
(through a Jacobs Associates merger with McMillen LLC)—
the company retained its employee-owned identity and is still
going strong. From a one-man consulting firm in 1955 it has
grown to a well-respected and internationally known engi-
neering and construction firm serving the sizable civil, under-
ground, and water resources markets, with 22 offices in North
America, Australia, and New Zealand.
Don’s legacy to the civil engineering community is the
advancement of construction engineering in the difficult,
uncertain geologic conditions inherent to underground con-
struction. He made engineering a much more important part
of the construction process by bringing advanced design meth-
ods to temporary construction facilities. And as a consultant to
owner-agencies, he increased the efficiency of the construction
industry as a whole by incorporating constructability aspects
into the design of permanent facilities.
Virginia died in 1995. Don is survived by their children John
and Judy Jacobs (Diablo, California), and grandchildren Jill
Jacobs-Barr (Chicago) and Patrick Donovan Jacobs (Oakland).
His son John followed in his father’s footsteps in the con-
struction industry by serving as an executive at Dillingham
Construction (Pleasanton, CA) from 1969 to 1998.



MUJID S. KAZIMI
1947–2015
Elected in 2012
“For contributions to technologies for the nuclear fuel cycle and reactor safety.”
BY MICHAEL CORRADINI AND NEIL TODREAS
MUJID S. KAZIMI, Tokyo Electric Power Company Profes-

sor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, lifelong educator and international
leader in nuclear reactor engineering, reactor safety, and the
nuclear fuel cycle, died July 1, 2015, at the age of 67 while
traveling in China. He had a heart attack.
Mujid was born in Jerusalem November 20, 1947, and later
moved with his family to Amman, Jordan. After earning his
bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Alexandria
University in Egypt in 1969, he came to MIT, where he earned
his SM in 1971 and PhD in 1973.
He worked briefly at Westinghouse Electric Corp. and
Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining the MIT fac-
ulty in 1976. He held faculty appointments in the Department
of Nuclear Science and Engineering (chair, 1989–1997) and
Department of Mechanical Engineering, and was director of
both MIT’s Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems
and the Kuwait-MIT Center for Natural Resources and the
Environment.
He was a world-renowned authority on the design and
analysis of nuclear power plants, nuclear safety, and the
nuclear fuel cycle (both fission and fusion). He and his stu-
dents made many important technological advances designed
189

to enhance the safety and economics of nuclear power, includ-

ing the developments of annular nuclear fuel with internal
and external cooling, and a ceramic fuel cladding made of
silicon carbide to replace the zirconium alloy cladding used
in most reactor fuel. His research group also made influential
contributions to the development of technological strategies
for the nuclear fuel cycle.
He was an active member of the nuclear engineering fac-
ulty at MIT, and his contributions to the development of
the department and the field of nuclear engineering were
extraordinary. He supervised more than 100 PhD and MS
theses, and coauthored the widely used two-volume textbook
Nuclear Systems (with Neil Todreas; CRC Press, 1989).
Both before and after his service as head of the Nuclear
Science and Engineering Department, he took on many other
leadership positions at MIT. At the time of his death he was
chair of the department’s graduate committee, a post he had
held for many years. He was a wise and judicious administra-
tor, a talented negotiator, and a selfless and always construc-
tive colleague.
He was also much in demand as an advisor on nuclear
research and education to governments and other organiza-
tions around the world. He served on and led numerous pro-
fessional technical committees, review panels, and advisory
boards, including the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear
Energy Advisory Committee, for which he chaired the sub-
committee on nuclear reactor technology.
Mujid received many honors for his scientific and engineer-
ing work. He was a member of the International Nuclear Energy
Academy and American Association for the Advancement
of Science, and a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. In
2011 he received the TAKREEM Arab Achievement Award for
Scientific and Technological Achievement, and in the same
year he was awarded the Kuwait Prize in Applied Sciences by
the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science.
Throughout his life he was a strong advocate for educa-
tional and scientific advancement across the Arab world,
an active member of many educational, humanitarian, and

MUJID S. KAZIMI 191
developmental organizations in the Middle East. He served

on the board of trustees of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, a
committee on the rejuvenation of scientific research in Kuwait,
and the international advisory board on nuclear energy for
the United Arab Emirates. While a student he was president
of the MIT Arab Students’ Organization, and he continued to
support it as a faculty member. His leadership on scientific
and educational development in the Middle East was a source
of inspiration and pride for MIT’s many Arab students and
alumni.
What this long list of roles, achievements, honors, and ser-
vice cannot adequately convey are the very special qualities
of Mujid as a teacher, mentor, and colleague. A modest and
unassuming man despite his eminence, he was kind, thought-
ful, patient, and always gracious and respectful toward his
students and his colleagues. His dedication and loyalty to
his students were inspirational. He was truly a gentleman and
a scholar in every sense.
Mujid addressed great challenges with diligence, humil-
ity, and effectiveness. He represented the very best of what an
educator and researcher should be in engineering. His friends
and colleagues are deeply grateful for the honor of having
known and served with him. He will be greatly missed.
Mujid is survived by his wife of 41 years, Nazik Denny,
daughter Yasmeen and sons Marwan and Omar, and three
grandchildren.


DORIS KUHLMANN-WILSDORF
1922–2010
Elected in 1994
“For contributions to dislocation theory and its

application to mechanical behavior.”
BY BHATKA B. RATH AND EDGAR A. STARKE, JR.
D ORIS KUHLMANN-WILSDORF, a pioneer in science edu-

cation, crystal plasticity, mechanical properties, and the theory
of crystal defects, died March 25, 2010, at the age of 88.
She was born in Bremen, Germany, on February 15, 1922,
to Adolph Friedrich and Elsa Kuhlmann. Before entering the
University of Göttingen in 1942, she worked as an apprentice
metallographer and materials tester (1940–1942) and devel-
oped her lifelong love of science. She completed her under-
graduate work in metallurgy in 1944, her master’s degree in
physics in 1946, and her doctor of philosophy in materials sci-
ence in 1947, all at the University of Göttingen.
A dedicated student and researcher, Doris continued work-
ing in her laboratory even after Allied bombs blew out the
windows during World War II. She emigrated to England in
1949 and studied with Nobel Laurate Sir Nevill Francis Mott
at the University of Bristol.
On January 4, 1950, she married Heinz G.F. Wilsdorf, a
gifted experimentalist, whom she had met at the University
of Göttingen. Shortly after their wedding they moved to South
Africa where she became a lecturer in physics at the University
of the Witwatersrand and Heinz was employed as a scientist at
the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria.
193

Doris received an honorary doctor of science degree from the

University of the Witwatersrand in 1955.
After the birth of their two children, Gabriele and Michael,
they moved to the United States in 1956. Doris joined the fac-
ulty of the University of Pennsylvania and Heinz accepted a
position at the Franklin Institute.
In 1963 Doris was offered a faculty position at the University
of Virginia, a predominantly male institution, as the first
woman professor of engineering physics. She came to the uni-
versity as part of a two-career-couple, as Heinz was invited to
chair the newly established Department of Materials Science.
Doris survived the resentment and sometimes overt discrimi-
nation of the all-male faculty, and in time came to love the uni-
versity. She was promoted to University Professor of Applied
Science in 1966, the highest academic rank at the university, a
position she held for 40 years.
Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf was internationally recognized
for her path-breaking work in plastic deformation, surface
physics, and crystal defects. She developed a unified theory of
plasticity for dislocation behavior. One of her most important
achievements was the development of metal fiber brushes for
use as sliding electrical contacts in electric motors, for which
she was granted six patents. She published more than 300 sci-
entific papers and started two companies.
Her many honors include the 1988 Heyn Medal from the
German Society for Materials Science for her work on the theory
of metal deformation; the Ragnar Holm Scientific Achievement
Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
in 1991; and the University of Virginia’s Christopher J. Henderson
Inventor of the Year Award in recognition of her research relat-
ing to electrical brushes in 2001. In 2004 she received an honor-
ary doctorate from the University of Pretoria. She was also an
active member of the Society of Women Engineers.
In 2001 a former student of the Department of Materials
Science and Engineering at the University of Virginia, Gregory
H. Olsen, provided most of the funding for a new materials
science building to be named in honor of Doris Kuhlmann-
Wilsdorf and Heinz Wilsdorf.

DORIS KUHLMANN-WILSDORF 195
After her official retirement from the university in 2005,

Doris taught a university seminar course in science and reli-
gion, continued her research, and participated in the Semester
at Sea program.
With an insatiable appetite for knowledge and a gift for cor-
rectly understanding the whys of phenomena, she coupled
those qualities with a forceful personality and ability to per-
suade others of her views. These characteristics greatly con-
tributed to her success and wide recognition.
She had a keen mind and could leapfrog in her thinking
so much that it was hard to keep up with her—and, to quote
Frank R.N. Nabarro, “she has an uncanny ability to be right
for no apparent reason.” These attributes allowed her to make
great strides in scientific interchanges.
Perhaps surprising is that accompanying her sharp mind was
a generosity and appreciation of others that endeared her to asso-
ciates, students, family, and friends. Everyone was her extended
family and she supported them with her time, resources, and
attention. Her friendships were enduring and interactions fre-
quent. She was quick to give a wide friendly smile.
With a desire to be helpful to individuals and leave a legacy
to science as well as society generally, she championed causes
across a range of issues. She led universitywide discussions on
evolution, apartheid, and honesty. Insights into the nature of the
universe led her to write a book on the relationship between sci-
ence and religion in addition to her popular course on the subject.
After her husband suffered a stroke that left him wheelchair
bound she devoted herself to his care. She even designed a
rope-and-pulley system to ease his transition into the water-
therapy spa.
The deaths of her two treasured children, Gabriele in 1969
and Michael in 1979, and her husband Heinz in 2000, were
crushing blows. But Doris remained warm, friendly, and
intellectually engaged throughout her life and touched many
people with her charm and wit.
She is survived by her niece and nephew Evelyn and René
Kalous of Germany, and close family friend Gretchen Watkins
of Charlottesville.


WA LT E R B . L a B E R G E
1924–2004
Elected in 1987
“For outstanding engineering contributions to the national security

through technical leadership in industry and in extensive public service.”
BY MALCOLM ROSS O’NEILL
WALTER BARBER L BERGE died in Aptos, California, on

a
July 16, 2004. He was 80 years old.
Walt was born March 29, 1924, to Walter Coloney LaBerge
and June Barber LaBerge. The eldest of four, he grew up in
Maywood, Illinois, along the west bank of the Des Plaines River,
just outside Chicago. In 1944 he received his bachelor of science
degree in naval engineering from Notre Dame University and
headed off to the war with his Navy ROTC classmates. He was
soon assigned to Yard Mine Sweeper (YMS) 165 and deployed
to the Western Pacific. By war’s end, as only a lieutenant junior
grade (LTJG), he had become the ship’s captain.
In 1946 he returned to Notre Dame, received his BS in
physics, and enrolled in the doctoral program. During that
period, he met and fell in love with Patricia Anne Sammon,
who was attending St. Mary’s and had grown up in nearby
River Forest. They were married in the fall of 1949.
After receiving his PhD in physics in the spring of 1950,
Walt was selected as a senior aerospace engineer for the first
infrared “heat homing” air-to-air missile system, Sidewinder,
under development at the Naval Ordinance Test Station in
China Lake, California. At its peak, Sidewinder was both a
Navy and Air Force program with the highest priority in both
services.
197

In 1955 Walt was selected as manager for the Sidewinder

program, which had grown to a $100 million project. In 1956 he
was voted one of Five Outstanding Young Men of California
by the California Chamber of Commerce. That same year,
Sidewinder was entered into service. More than 60 years later,
Sidewinder is still the most widely used air-to-air missile, in
more than 40 nations throughout the world. The Sidewinder
AIM-9 is one of the most mature, least expensive, and most
successful missiles in the US weapons inventory. Describing
the development of Sidewinder, Walt wrote:
The marvel of Sidewinder was that it was made up, for the
most part, of well-understood turn-of-the-century, fifty-
year-old technology, inspirationally collected into a missile
which led the world into guided weapons and the US into
air warfare mastery.
In 1957, with a successful physics and engineering record

and major technical management experience behind him,
Walt was offered a significant job in the aerospace industry.
Philco Corporation selected him as director of engineering at
its Western Development Laboratories (WDL) in Palo Alto.
In 1960, under his direction, Philco launched the world’s first
active repeater satellite, the Courier 1B. The company was also
contracted by NASA to design and build the now iconic front-
wall display for Mission Control in Florida, which was later
refined in Houston.
In 1961 Philco merged with Ford Motor Company and
became Philco-Ford Corporation. The new company bid on
the contract to design, procure, and install all of the instrumen-
tation for the new NASA Mission Control Center then under
construction at Clear Lake, Texas, just south of Houston. Had
it not been for the merger with Ford, the company most likely
would not have been considered for the job because of the
magnitude of the engineering resources required. Walt wrote:
The selection process by which Philco-Ford was chosen was

particularly provident. The written discussion of how we
would do the job and our proposed costs were, it appeared,

WALTER B. LaBERGE 199
not as important as the orals which would follow if we made

the cut…. they placed much importance on face to face discus-
sions with the proposed team leaders and with senior corpo-
rate management.
Dr. Chris Kraft, who later became a close friend, was the
senior NASA selection official. . . . As I remember it, after I had
described Ford’s intense commitment to our country’s endeavor
to go to the Moon, I discussed my own China Lake background
and my own experience of how government engineers need to
work with their industrial contractors and vice versa.
Philco-Ford was awarded the contract in early 1962 and

Walt was selected to lead the project. NASA’s Mission Control
Center was often cited as the most highly automated informa-
tion correlation center in existence because of the vast amount
of data that it processed (provided under separate contract by
IBM).
Although Philco-Ford was selected because of its ability
to quickly assign resources to the project, during the first six
months staffing was a principal problem. Walt wrote:
The problem was wiring up all the connections needed to tie

together all the computers to the information sources and to
the consoles of the flight controllers. After the wires were laid,
there were then literally a zillion connections to be made and
manually verified. It was a low-tech, manually intensive job
where lots of people were needed. And we had far less than we
needed to make the schedule NASA demanded and we had
signed up for.
According to a December 2013 article in Engineering &

Technology Magazine (“NASA’s Control Centers: Design &
History” by Layne Karafantis):
The statistics were truly astounding. In 1965, the Mission

Control Center housed the largest assembly of television
switching equipment in the world—larger even than com-
mercial studios in New York City—as well as the largest solid-
state switching matrices of 20 megacycle bandwidth. This
system was driven by more than 1,100 cabinets of electronics

equipment, 140 command consoles, 136 television cameras,

and 384 television receivers. Some 10,000 miles of wire linked
this behemoth with more than two million wire connections.
In 1966 Walt returned to Philco-Ford’s Palo Alto site and

became vice president of the WDL Electronics Group. But he
remained involved in operations at Houston Mission Control
and was there for the Apollo 11 lunar landing and the Apollo
13 aborted mission. He worked closely with many US astro-
nauts, including Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, Jim Lovell,
and Wally Shirra, as well as NASA flight directors Chris Kraft,
Gene Krants, and Glynn Lunney.
He returned to government service in 1971 as technical
director of the Naval Ordinance Test Station in China Lake,
where he had first worked as a young physicist 21 years earlier.
In 1973 he was nominated and confirmed by the Senate
as President Nixon’s assistant secretary of the Air Force for
research and engineering. In 1976 he served as assistant sec-
retary of NATO for Defense Support in Brussels. And in 1977
he was confirmed again, this time as President Carter’s under
secretary of the Army. In 1980 he became deputy under secre-
tary of defense for research and engineering.
After his stint in the Pentagon, in 1981 he became corpo-
rate vice president of Lockheed Missile and Space Company
in Sunnyvale, California. He worked there until 1989, when he
retired as vice president for advanced planning.
In retirement Walt remained active in the engineering field
for both government and academia. He was chair of the Army
Science Board, professor of physics at the Naval Postgraduate
School, visiting professor at the Defense System Management
College, and senior researcher at the Institute for Advanced
Technology at the University of Texas in Austin.
In his honor, the Institute for Advanced Technology created
the Walter B. LaBerge Distinguished Leadership Award for
those excelling in science and engineering. The award states:
The Walter B. LaBerge Distinguished Leadership Award is

named in honor of the late Walter Barber LaBerge, pioneering

aerospace research scientist and esteemed public servant

whose wisdom, inspiration, and selfless service were integral
to our national Defense and Space programs. Ever an astute
leader, Dr. LaBerge not only shepherded the essential programs
of his day, he nurtured the seeds of future scientific and tech-
nical military advances. As chief scientist at the Institute for
Advanced Technology, his leadership of research at the fron-
tiers of knowledge and his enthusiastic mentorship of young
scientists and engineers propelled the Institute to interna-
tional leadership in electromagnetic launch and h ypervelocity
physics science and technology.
In his Memoirs for My Children (self-published in Austin;

1999), Walt wrote that one of the most influential classes he
ever took was creative writing in high school. He first used his
writing skills as the assistant sports editor for the high school
newspaper. Besides being elected to the National Honor
Society, he was president of the Algemetricians and a member
of the Senior Science and French clubs.
He used the skills first developed in high school in count-
less papers, technical presentations, and speeches through-
out his career. He put his fluency in French to good use while
living in Brussels working at NATO, and later after he pur-
chased an apartment in the south of France, which he visited
as time permitted.
Most importantly, Walt had a profound interest in history,
especially the Civil War. He used that knowledge in many of
his speeches and papers to draw similarities between the past,
present, and future. Here is the opening of one of his many
writings, Lessons from the Civil War (published in the Indiana
Historical Society Military History Journal in January 1980):
It is a pleasant leisurely twenty minute walk from the mall

entrance of the Pentagon to Arlington National Cemetery. As
one strolls up the gentle incline of the cemetery the intensity
of the Pentagon is left behind. The competitive pressures of
how to get things accomplished give way to more reflective
thoughts of what the Pentagon should do and why. In the
peace and serenity of that National Cemetery and of our many

battlefield parks one can draw insights into today’s problems

from those who lived their lives in the service of their country.
It is about the help to be drawn from those who have preceded
us that I wish to write.
He continued:
[O]ne last lesson important above all others that flows from
our Civil War heritage is an appreciation of how very good
we can be if we only try. We in America must appreciate what
we can do as individuals in a gigantic, impersonal system. We
need to be reminded of the many times that one ordinary man
made a difference. The Civil War is replete with such men who,
while considerate of others, believed in themselves.
How apt that he would write about one ordinary man’s ability
to make a difference.
Walt himself started from very humble beginnings. His
father was an industrial brush salesman for the Osborn
Manufacturing company. His grandfather was an immigrant
from the French-speaking town of Châteauguay, Québec, just
south of Montreal, who came to St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1873.
Walt was very proud of his family history and an avid gene-
alogist, tracking his family line back to Robert de la Berge who
came over from Normandy to Québec in 1658.
Among Walt’s greatest thrills was, at the age of seven,
riding in the cab of a locomotive conducted by his maternal
grandfather and getting to pull the steam whistle while going
60 miles per hour. His second greatest thrill was some 50 years
later when he was outfitted in a space suit and strapped into
the cockpit of the SR-71 Blackbird, the world’s fastest air-
breathing plane, with 160,000 horsepower of thrust. He flew in
it at over Mach 3 at an altitude of more than 80,000 feet, look-
ing out at the stars above and the curvature of the Earth below.
Walt’s portfolio was enormous and influential, and he was
widely acknowledged as one of the country’s finest leaders
in the fields of aerospace and national security system man-
agement. He was a physicist and engineer who embodied an

exceptional combination of competence, commitment, cour-

age, integrity, and imagination.
After his first job with the Sidewinder missile, he quickly
rose to become an important member of the team that got us
to the Moon. He helped steer the future of the Army, Air Force,
and NATO. He played an important role at Lockheed develop-
ing systems that are critical today. And late in his life, he spent
his days teaching at the Navy Postgraduate School and solv-
ing physics and engineering issues on the electromagnetic rail-
gun system under development at the Institute for Advanced
Technology.
In addition to his election to the NAE in 1987, he received
many honors:
• American Theater WWII, 1944

• Pacific Theater WWII, 1945
• Outstanding Young Men of California, 1956
• NASA, Apollo Achievement Award, 1969
• US Navy Superior Civilian Service, 1970
• US Air Force Distinguished Service, 1975
• US Army Distinguished Service, 1979 & 1993
• Department of Defense Distinguished Service, 1980
• Award of Honor, University of Notre Dame, 1990
• The Walter B. LaBerge Distinguished Leadership Award
Walt’s beloved wife of 32 years, Pat, succumbed to cancer

in 1982. She had been a professor of speech pathology at San
Jose State University, and then had a career as a speech thera-
pist in the public school system while raising five children as
the family moved around the world following Walt’s various
assignments. Walt later married Elizabeth (Bette) Ann Deeley,
whom he had known many years before as a student at Proviso
Township High School in Maywood. She died in 2003.
He is survived by the children of his first marriage: Peter
LaBerge, Stephen LaBerge, Jeanne LaBerge, Philip LaBerge, and
Jacqueline LaBerge Gunn; and stepchildren Deborah Pharris,
Pamela Alexander, Richard Baughman, and Kurt Baughman.


WILLIAM J. LeMESSURIER
1926–2007
Elected in 1978
“Teaching, research, and practice of structural design for buildings, with

special concern for the relationship of structures to total architecture.”
BY RICHARD A. HENIGE, JR.

WILLIAM JAMES L MESSURIER, innovative structural

e
engineer, died at age 81 on June 14, 2007, in Casco, Maine.
Bill, as he was known to family, friends, and colleagues,
was born June 12, 1926, in Pontiac, Michigan, to William James
LeMessurier, Sr., who owned a dry cleaning business, and the
former Bertha Sherman, a homemaker. The youngest of four
children, he attended the Cranbrook School for Boys (whose
campus was designed by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen) in
Bloomfield Hills, where he showed an early aptitude in math-
ematics, music, and the arts.
For his undergraduate education, Bill decided to attend
Harvard College instead of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), largely because of Harvard’s more inviting
campus. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in
1947, then studied architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School
of Design (GSD) before transferring to MIT’s Department of
Building Engineering and Construction to study structural
engineering.
At MIT he worked part-time for Albert Goldberg, an
established structural engineer in Boston. After receiving his
master’s degree in 1953, he worked full-time for Mr. Goldberg
and became a partner in Goldberg, LeMessurier Associates in
the mid-1950s. In April 1961 he left to establish LeMessurier
205

Associates with new partners William Thoen, Emil Hervol,

and James Collins. He retired in 1995.
Throughout his career Bill pioneered the use of innova-
tive structural systems that efficiently resisted gravity, wind,
and earthquake loads while respecting the aesthetic concerns
of his architectural clients. In 1962 he worked with architects
Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell on the design of
Boston City Hall, where exposed concrete beams, columns,
and walls are a prominent feature of the architectural design.
In 1970 he again worked with Kallmann and McKinnell as
well as Henry Wood on the design of an athletic facility for
Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. For this build-
ing, the structural system featured external three-dimensional
trusses that efficiently supported the roof without the visual
distraction of internal trusses.
Bill developed an especially close professional relationship
with architect Hugh Stubbins of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
collaborating most notably on the design of Citicorp Center in
New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Singapore
Treasury Building, and the Yokohama Landmark Tower, the
second-tallest building in Japan.
In the 235-meter-tall Singapore Treasury Building, 1.47-meter-
deep steel plate girders cantilever 12.2 meters out from cylindri-
cal concrete shear walls to support column-free office space. The
concrete walls are the only vertical structural elements of the
building, providing support for both gravity and lateral loads.
The 920-foot-tall Citicorp Center tower may be the building
of which Bill was most proud. The building site presented a
unique design challenge in that one corner was reserved for
construction of St. Peter’s Church. Hugh Stubbins’ architec-
tural response to this constraint was to elevate the base of the
tower 10 floors above the plaza level. Bill’s structural response
was to locate structural steel “mast” columns at the center of
the four sides of the tower. Eight-story-tall diagonal braces at
the perimeter of the building transfer gravity and wind loads
to these four columns.
Although Citicorp Center’s perimeter braced frames pro-
vide a very efficient and stiff system for resisting wind loads,

WILLIAM J. LeMESSURIER 207
Bill’s experience during a peer review of the John Hancock

tower in Boston (designed by others) led him to believe that
lateral accelerations at upper floors of the building could be
disturbing to building occupants. Subsequent wind tunnel
tests performed under the supervision of Alan Davenport
at the University of Western Ontario Boundary Layer Wind
Tunnel Laboratory confirmed that wind accelerations would
likely be 60 percent greater than generally accepted comfort
criteria, primarily because the building was so much taller
than its neighbors.
Since wind accelerations are inversely proportional to the
square root of the product of building mass, stiffness, and
damping, Bill realized that this problem could be mitigated by
increasing mass, stiffness, or damping by 160 percent. But the
cost of doing so was prohibitive, so Bill instead proposed the
use of a large tuned mass damper (TMD), which was designed
with the assistance of David Wormley of MIT’s Department of
Mechanical Engineering and Niels Peterson of MTS Systems
in Minneapolis. The TMD—a 400-ton block of concrete located
at the upper mechanical floor of the building, supported by
pressurized oil slide bearings and connected to the building
by nitrogen gas-filled springs—reduced wind accelerations by
38 percent. Thanks to this effectiveness, TMDs have since been
used by other engineers in many tall buildings throughout the
world.
Bill is perhaps most widely known and admired for his
ethical response to a flaw he discovered in connection details
for diagonal braces in the Citicorp Center tower after construc-
tion was completed.
While preparing a lecture about the building for a course
he was teaching at Harvard’s GSD, he received a call from
an engineering student in New Jersey whose professor had
questioned the location of the perimeter columns, specifically
for wind loads applied at a 45-degree angle. Bill had studied
this problem earlier and realized that simultaneous applica-
tion of wind loads from both orthogonal directions did not
change overturning forces in the columns, but did increase
forces in diagonal braces by 41 percent. Since the design of

perimeter-braced frames was governed by stiffness control

and not wind forces, this increase did not affect the size of
the diagonal braces. However, Bill recalled that the steel fab-
ricator had requested the use of bolted connections instead of
full-penetration welded connections for splices in the diago-
nal braces. When Bill discovered that increased wind forces
had not been considered during shop drawing review of the
revised diagonal brace connections, he decided that the brace
connections should be reinforced to reduce the risk to public
safety—even though the New York City building code and
the three national building codes in effect at the time did not
require design for simultaneous application of wind from two
orthogonal directions.
Bill was also a highly regarded educator, lecturing at
MIT’s Department of Civil Engineering, several Structures
Congresses of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE),
and many major engineering schools. He was appointed
adjunct professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in
1982.
His research interests included structural optimization and
column stability. He was one of the pioneers in applying vir-
tual work optimization techniques to reduce material quan-
tities in structures. He wrote two highly cited papers on the
stability of steel frames. He was also one of the inventors of
the staggered-truss system for high-rise hotel and residential
buildings.
Bill was a fellow of the American Concrete Institute and
ASCE, and in 1961 he was appointed to the American Institute
of Steel Construction (AISC) Committee on Specifications, the
body responsible for publishing the design specification for
structural steel buildings in the United States.
In addition to his election to the National Academy of
Engineering in 1978, he was elected an honorary member
of the American Institute of Architects in 1988 and ASCE in
1989. In 2004 he was made a national honor member of Chi
Epsilon.
He received the Allied Professions Medal from the American
Institute of Architects in 1968; ASCE’s George Winter Award

WILLIAM J. LeMESSURIER 209
in 1993, Shortridge Hardesty Award in 1995, and President’s

Medal in 1996; and the AISC J. Lloyd Kimbrough Award
in 1999. He also received honorary doctor of engineering
degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1998 and the
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2002.
Bill is survived by his wife Dorothy (née Judd), daughters
Claire and Irene, son Peter (BS mech eng from MIT, 1984), and
seven grandchildren (Amy, BS neurobiology from MIT, 2010).

Ingersoll Studio, Menlo Park, California

THOMAS M. LEPS
1914–2010
Elected in 1973
“Achievements in the field of soil mechanics, design of earth

and rockfill dams, and safety of earth structures.”
BY NELSON L. DE S. PINTO
THOMAS M acMASTER LEPS died April 23, 2010, at the age

of 95. Born in Keyser, West Virginia, on December 3, 1914, he
grew up in San Jose, California.
He had a paper route to pay for college and, using his
Indian motorcycle to deliver the papers, he became a skilled
rider. Hired as a park ranger for the summers of 1933–1936
at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, his duties
included riding into the parks on motorcycle or horseback to
ensure safety and maintain the park rules. His nephew Tim
O’Leary remembers him “speaking warmly of his time work-
ing in the mountains of central California” and that “he was
an avid swimmer, hiker, and outdoor enthusiast.” He met his
wife Catherine (Katie) Sacksteder at the main lodge.
Tom enrolled at Stanford University and graduated with an
AB in civil engineering in 1936. He received an MS in civil
engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1939.
After getting his AB he initiated his professional work
as a civil engineer and research assistant on highways, soil
mechanics, hydrology, and flood control dams until 1941,

except for the time at MIT for his MS degree. He became
an assistant civil engineer in the US Bureau of Reclamation,
working at the Denver Earth Dams Laboratory in 1941–1942.
211

He moved next to DeLeuw, Cather & Co., where he was in

charge of construction of ordnance and ammunition depots
(1942–1943).
Those activities were interrupted for service in World War II
as an officer in the US Navy Civil Engineer Corps (125th Seabee
Battalion), in charge of the design of Navy bases and airfields
on Hawaii and Okinawa (1943–1946).
In 1946 Tom resumed work as a civil engineer, now with
Southern California Edison Co., one of the largest electric
power utilities in the country, where he rapidly reached the
position of chief civil engineer and became involved in the engi-
neering of many large projects.
In his activities with Edison, which involved the design
and construction of large dams, tunnels, canals, steam and
hydro power plants, transmission lines, and switchyards, Tom
achieved prestige as a soil mechanics expert and respect for
the quality and consistency of his technical opinions on the
design and construction of large hydro projects. During his
last three years with the company he was a manager of orga-
nization and procedures.
In 1961 he left for a position as chief engineer with Shannon
& Wilson Inc., a company involved in soil mechanics and
foundation engineering, for three more years of work in the
geotechnical field.
The foregoing experience gave him the opportunity to build
up a solid base of knowledge in both his geotechnical specialty
and heavy construction works in general, and to establish his
reputation in the engineering community. That knowledge
base supported his decision to begin an independent consult-
ing practice in the field he defined as “geotechnical engineer-
ing as related to dams, project planning, analysis of heavy
construction problems, hydro, steam, and nuclear power
plants, penstocks, tunnels, canals, foundations, landslides,
subsidence, and seismic problems.”
Over the next four decades Tom contributed to more than
100 projects in the United States, Canada, and about 15 for-
eign countries. His participation was multifaceted. He was
a member of the board of consultants for many large hydro

THOMAS M. LEPS 213
projects (10 in Brazil alone). He cooperated in the design and

construction of paramount projects such as the Tehachapi
Mountain Crossing of the California Aqueduct and the Bay
Area Rapid Transit system (BART), and was a member of the
Independent Panel on the Failure of Teton Dam. He also con-
tributed his analysis and advice to the solution of problems on
many other projects.
His activities included dam safety reports for several hydro-
power utilities. He had the required experience and the right
approach to set the reports to the satisfaction of the owners
and public authorities alike. As a result he became a sort of
permanent consultant for utilities such as the Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA) to handle problems at short notice. His con-
tributions were always distinguished by the clarity of his engi-
neering reasoning, his objective and impartial judgment, and
his excellent and legendary English writing form.
Samples of his reasoning and clear writing style are evident
in a collection of more than 30 technical papers, some of which
have become benchmarks on the evolution of the rockfill
dam design. His papers on “Review of Shearing Strength of
Rockfill” (ASCE Proceedings, 1970) and “Flow through Rockfill”
(Casagrande Volume, 1973) and his three chapters (“Rockfill
Dam Design and Analysis,” “Rockfill Dam Construction and
Foundation Treatment,” and “Rockfill Dam Performance
and Remedial Measures”) in Advanced Dam Engineering for
Design, Construction, and Rehabilitation (Springer US, 1988)
illustrate both his commitment to rockfill dams and the nature
of his rich contributions.
For his professional achievements, Tom was made a member
of the National Academy of Engineering in 1973 and in 2006
he received the US Society of Dams Lifetime Achievement
Award.
I met Tom in Brazil when he was for the first time a member
of the board of consultants for two important rockfill dam
projects in the Iguaçu River in the 1970s. We worked together
from then on as board members on six other hydroelectric
projects in Brazil. The last one was finished at the end of
the 20th century, when Tom was winding down his prolific

65-year professional career. Those contacts and the opportu-

nity to share not only technical questions but ethical circum-
stances as well increased my admiration for him and made us
very good and close friends.
Tom belonged to that special class of American engineers
that, having experienced the pressure of war engineering at
the start of their career, brought to their professional life the
no-nonsense approach and honesty required for good engi-
neering of large hydro projects. In addition, by his character
he left an example of competent and ethical behavior that con-
tinues to inspire the engineering world in the United States,
Brazil, and the many countries in which he worked.
Tim O’Leary noted that Tom and his wife transmitted their
passion for service and education to their nieces—one is an
architect and the other an engineer, both employed by Bechtel
Corporation. He described his uncle as “a gentleman, the defi-
nition of civility and dignity.”
Tom is survived by his son Timothy M. Leps.



JOHN L. LUMLEY
1930–2015
Elected in 1991
“For significant contributions to the understanding

of turbulent and non-Newtonian flows.”
BY SIDNEY LEIBOVICH
JOHN LEASK LUMLEY, Willis H. Carrier Professor of

echanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University,
M
died in Ithaca on May 30, 2015, of a brain tumor. He was 84.
It is widely believed that his contributions to fluid mechanical
turbulence were among the most significant in the second half
of the 20th century. His impact on the field was impressive and
lasting.
John Lumley was born November 4, 1930, in Detroit. His
parents were immigrants, his father from England and his
mother from Scotland. His father, Charles Swain Lumley, was
an architectural engineer and instilled in him a deep apprecia-
tion of good design. His mother, Jane Leask Lumley, was the
likely source of his extensive repertoire of British aphorisms
with which he occasionally sprinkled his conversation.
John enrolled in Harvard University in 1948 and received
an AB in engineering sciences and applied physics in 1952. His
interest in statistical physics was piqued by a course taught by
Stanislaw Ulam, who was visiting Harvard.
John chose to attend Johns Hopkins University for gradu-
ate work, primarily (he said) based on the attractiveness of
their recruiting brochures. After receiving an MSE in mechani-
cal engineering in 1954, he switched to the aeronautical
217

engineering program to work with Stanley Corrsin on turbu-

lence, earning his PhD in aeronautics in 1957.
While at Harvard, John had met Jane French, a student at
Radcliffe. They married while he was a graduate student and
their three children were born in Baltimore.
After two years as a postdoctoral fellow with Corrsin, John
joined the faculty at Pennsylvania State University, initially
as a research professor at the Garfield Water Tunnel of the
Applied Research Laboratory and then as a professor in aero-
nautics. At age 44 he was appointed Evan Pugh Professor of
Aerospace Engineering, the youngest person to hold this title.
In 1977 he accepted an offer from Cornell to be the Willis H.
Carrier Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
He thrived at Cornell and built a turbulence group that became
recognized worldwide.
John’s work covered many areas, from fundamental physics
and the mathematical theory of turbulence to the very practi-
cal, like his design of very quiet water tunnels for testing full-
scale torpedoes. He was an expert on undersea warfare, in
which turbulence plays a central role, and he was involved
in this work throughout his tenure at Penn State.
The scope of his work was remarkably broad, ranging from
turbulence modeling (he insisted on models that obeyed the
same invariance properties as the physics) to incisive experi-
ments to computation. He wrote about environmental flows,
technological flows, drag reduction, and buoyant plumes,
among other applications.
In a seminal paper, “The Structure of Inhomogeneous
Turbulent Flows,” presented at the 1967 Moscow conference
on “Atmospheric Turbulence and Radio Wave Propagation,”
he showed that a particular series representation of any tur-
bulent flow, a “proper orthogonal decomposition,” could be
found. For a given number of terms, this kind of series cap-
tures more of the energy of the flow than a Fourier or any other
series and is thus an optimal representation. Each term can be
thought of as representing a “structure” in the turbulence.
In this way he provided a precise definition of what had
been a loose notion of the coherent features observed in

JOHN L. LUMLEY 219
turbulent flows. The paper appeared in an obscure publica-

tion and it took some time to become widely known. Proper
orthogonal decomposition of turbulent flows has since devel-
oped into a cottage industry.
He (co)authored six books: The Structure of Atmospheric
Turbulence (with Hans A. Panofsky; Interscience Publishers,
1964); Statistical Tools in Turbulence (Academic Press, 1970);
A First Course in Turbulence (with Henk Tennekes; MIT Press,
1972); Turbulence, Coherent Structures, Dynamical Systems, and
Symmetry (with Philip Holmes and Gal Berkooz; Cambridge
University Press, 1998); Engines: An Introduction (Cambridge
University Press, 1999); and Still Life with Cars: An Automotive
Memoir (McFarland, 2005). He also wrote 229 scientific papers
and produced and performed in two films in the NSF series on
fluid dynamics.
In addition to his books and papers, he served the commu-
nity in numerous ways, including memberships and chair-
manships of many national and international committees.
Among his editorial duties for several journals, he spent over
30 years with Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics, 19 of them as
coeditor or editor.
He made several trips behind the Iron Curtain and met the
most prominent and productive Soviet scientists working in
turbulence. His work had caught their attention starting with
his 1964 book with Panofsky, The Structure of Atmospheric
Turbulence. This was recognized as an important contribution
and was translated into Russian by A.S. Monin.
During the Cold War, Soviet scientists had developed turbu-
lence theory and experiment further than their counterparts in
the West. John brought their advances to the attention of Western
researchers first by editing English translations of the impor-
tant two-volume treatise Statistical Fluid Mechanics: Mechanics
of Turbulence by A.S. Monin and A.M. Yaglom (MIT Press,
Vol. 1, 1971; Vol. 2, 1975). These had to be smuggled out of the
Soviet Union. He also edited the translation of Variability of the
Oceans, by A.S. Monin, V.M. Kamenkovich, and V.G. Kort (John
Wiley & Sons, 1977). In addition, for many years he edited the
cover-to-cover English translations of Izvestiya: Atmospheric

and Oceanic Physics, a transaction series of the Soviet Academy

of Sciences.
Among the most prominent of the many honors John
received were election to the National Academy of Engineering
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; he was a
fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and American
Academy of Mechanics; he was awarded the Timoshenko
Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,
the Fluid and Plasmadynamics Award of the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the APS Fluid
Dynamics Prize. He also received honorary doctorates from
the University of Poitiers and the École Centrale de Lyon. He
was especially proud of these.
A true child of Detroit, John developed a lifelong love of
automobiles. He attended a preparatory school in Detroit
alongside the children of auto company executives. In addi-
tion to a fine academic curriculum, the school offered shop
courses, including ones particular to the automobile industry,
which John appreciated and in which he excelled.
His lifelong avocation was the repair of family cars—mostly
his family’s small fleet of Volkswagen Beetles—and the resto-
ration of six classic cars, ranging from about 50 to 80 years old.
He was a self-taught craftsman, rebuilding cars that arrived
at “Lumley’s Good Enough Garage” in poor condition and,
on one occasion, in boxes. He did all of the restorations him-
self—the mechanical work, body work, painting, and fabrica-
tion of the interior, even the sewing of the leather upholstery
and reconstruction of the interior wood veneer. Much of this is
captured in his memoir written after retirement, Still Life with
Cars. He had an expert knowledge of the history of the auto-
mobile and enjoyed talking about it, especially the engineering
solutions to various subsystems that the designers adopted,
some of which he admired and some not.
His curiosity and memory were remarkable, as was the
facility for language so evident in his writings. Together with
his love of reading and sense of humor, these characteristics
made conversation with him entertaining and rewarding.
While he had strong opinions about research and rapidly

JOHN L. LUMLEY 221
arrived at theories for controversial questions, he was always

willing (’though not always happy) to abandon a pet theory if
experiment proved it untenable.
John and Jane were gourmets, which no doubt was why
John preferred France as the destination for his sabbatical
leaves. Jane taught in the School of Hotel Administration at
Cornell and was a restaurant critic for Distinguished Restaurants
of North America. The two of them loved to cook and hosted
many delightful dinner parties at their home.
John was predeceased by Jane in March 2014. They are sur-
vived by their children Katherine Leask Lumley-Sapanski,
Jennifer French Lumley, and John Christopher Lumley, and
five grandchildren.

John DeMaio, New Providence, New Jersey

D O U G L A S C . Ma c M I L L A N
1912–2001
Elected in 1967
“Ship design development.”
BY ALLEN CHIN
DOUGLAS CLARK M acMILLAN, noted naval architect and

marine engineer, former president of George G. Sharp, Inc.,
naval architects and marine engineers, died in East O rleans,
Massachusetts, on October 26, 2001, at the age of 89.
He was born July 15, 1912, in Dedham, Massachusetts. He
attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
he received a bachelor of science degree in naval architecture
in 1934.
He joined Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock in Kearney,
New Jersey, in 1934 and left in 1941 to work for George Sharp.
In 1951 he was elected president of the company and in 1969 he
became chair of the board. During his years at Sharp he played
a major role in quite a few first-of-a-kind designs, including
the following:
• The first nuclear-powered merchant ship, the NS

Savannah, for the Maritime Administration, US
Department of Commerce, constructed by the New
York Shipbuilding Corporation. President Eisenhower
wanted to demonstrate the peaceful use of the atom
and empowered the Maritime Administration to
accomplish this goal by designing and building a
nuclear-powered merchant ship.
223

• The first integrated tugbarge, the MV Carport, built for

Cargill, Inc. by Christy Shipbuilding Corp.
• The first cellular containership, the SS Gateway City, con-
verted for Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company by Mobile
Ship Repair for US domestic trade.
• The first roll-on/roll-off vehicle carrier, the USNS Comet,
built for the Military Sea Transport Service by Sun
Shipbuilding and Company.
• The first roll-on/roll-off containership, the MV New
Yorker, built for Containerships, Inc. by Maryland
Shipbuilding and Drydock Company.
In all of these Doug MacMillan was very innovative and

played a major role in the conceptual, preliminary, and con-
tract designs.
He was also prominently involved in the Massive
Emergency Ship Construction Program during World
War II, during which more than 600 ships were built to
Sharp’s plans—more than 400 Victory merchant ships and
numerous Naval auxiliaries, including 50 CVE escort air-
craft carriers, the “baby flattops” of Pacific fame.
His contributions were recognized by his election to the
NAE in 1967, and in 1969 he received the Elmer A. Sperry
Award “for his direction and engineering contributions to
all aspects of the preliminary studies and final design of the
NS Savannah.” The Society of Naval Architects and Marine
Engineers (SNAME) also recognized his accomplishments
in naval architecture and marine engineering by award-
ing him in 1969 the coveted, prestigious David W. Taylor
Medal, which is given for “notable achievements in naval
architecture and/or marine engineering.”
Doug was a fellow and vice president of SNAME and was
active on many of its committees as well as those of the US
Coast Guard relating to the safety of nuclear merchant ships.
He was also a member of the American Society of Naval
Engineers and a trustee of St. John’s Guild in New York City.
After his work at Sharp, he became a consultant naval
architect, assistant to the general manager at Quincy

DOUGLAS C. MacMILLAN 225
Shipbuilding. He was on the board of directors of the

Atomic Industrial Forum and a member of the advisory
committees of the US Navy and the US Coast Guard.
His son Douglas, remembering his father, wrote:
After retiring he embarked on a mission to do extensive

research on his family genealogy. He traveled to Scotland
and learned that his family emigrated in 1806 from the Isle
of Colonsay, Argyllshire, to Prince Edward Island, Canada,
on the ship Spencer. A naval architect by profession, he was
intrigued with the possibility of finding the characteristics of
the Spencer. His research was successful. The genealogy of the
MacMillans and MacNeills was published. A copy is housed in
a museum on PEI.
More than anything, he loved spending time with his
family on the Belgrade Lakes, Maine. He designed and helped
build the cabin on Great Pond. Doug enjoyed being on the
lake canoeing and sailing. On his seventy-fifth birthday, he
sailed his Catamaran the sixteen-mile length of the lake and
onto the ramp one last time! From then on he was content to
watch the sunsets on his much loved GOLDEN POND.
Doug also liked gardening, woodworking, and travel. At

the time of his death, he was survived by his wife Dorothy
(Chase) MacMillan; sons Douglas S. MacMillan of Doylestown,
Pennsylvania, and John R. MacMillan, of Eagle, Idaho; brother
John and sister Gertrude, both of Dedham; four grandchildren;
and a niece.


CHARLES E. MASSONNET
1914–1996
Elected in 1978
“Contributions to advanced structural theory and

understanding of the behavior of metal structures.”
BY STEVEN J. FENVES
C HARLES ERNEST MASSONNET, a prominent European

educator and researcher on structural steel construction and
initiator of many international collaborations in the field, died
April 4, 1996, at the age of 82.
He was born March 14, 1914, in Arlon, in the south of
Belgium, to Jules Massonnet, a pharmacist who served as
mayor of Arlon and member of the Belgian Senate, and Louise
(née Martha), a homemaker. He attended elementary and sec-
ondary school in Arlon and obtained his baccalaureate with an
award of excellence.
He studied civil engineering at the University of Liège,
graduating in 1936 with highest distinction. He drew the
attention of his professors with his intellectual prowess, the
clarity and precision of his reports and lab books, and his rel-
evant comments in class.
In 1936–1937 he served in the Belgian Army’s 30th Artillery
Regiment and then began his professional career in the Civil
Engineering Department at the University of Liège. Shortly
afterward, he won a research grant and a competitive state
This tribute was prepared with substantial assistance from Emeritus

Professor René Maquoi of the University of Liège.

227

travel award, but his career was interrupted for six years by
World War II.
Mobilized in August 1939 as a reserve sublieutenant, he
was captured by the German army in May 1940 and held as
a prisoner of war until liberated on May 17, 1945. During his
captivity, despite the hardships and the near total lack of ref-
erence documents, he lectured to his fellow prisoners, pre-
pared original papers, and even had some of these published.
Throughout his captivity, he remained resolute, refusing sub-
mission and despair.
He returned to the university with preliminary research
ideas that he had formed in captivity. At the age of 31 he
assumed a position vacated by the death of the professor of
strength of materials and went on to have an extraordinarily
fruitful academic career.
For more than 30 years he led a staff at the university that
eventually grew to about 30 persons. He attracted researchers
from abroad and established close connections with research
centers in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Research areas
included many forms of buckling, shear lag, postbuckling
strength, fracture mechanics, plastic design, structural connec-
tions, finite element methods and related software, boundary
elements, and large-scale tests.
In the United States he was a lecturer or visiting professor
at the universities of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford,
Lehigh, Cornell, Brown, California (Berkeley and Los Angeles),
MIT, and Washington.
He lectured at research centers all over the world and par-
ticipated in many international colloquia, conferences, and
congresses. The Second International Colloquium on Stability
was held in Liège in April 1977 under his leadership. Advances
in the field of steel structures that were presented at this col-
loquium and its sister venues were reflected in the European
Recommendations for Steel Construction, published in 1978, that
formed the basis of the draft European standard “Eurocode 3:
Design of Steel Structures” a few years later.
He produced more than 230 papers and five books: two
on the strength of materials, and one each on plastic design

CHARLES E. MASSONNET 229
(coauthored with M.A. Save), on the design of orthotropic

decks (the Guyon-Massonnet method), and on the use of com-
puters for the design of civil engineering structures (the first
book in French on the topic).
Beyond his academic activities, Professor Massonnet and his
collaborators were consultants or advisors for design offices and
public agencies. For 25 years he was a consultant to SECO, the
Belgian nonprofit organization that has served as the c ountry’s
technical control bureau for construction. In that capacity he
was Belgium’s premier forensic engineer on the strength, sta-
bility, and safety of steel structures. He personally investigated
and provided testimony on major structural issues, including
failures, and he assigned investigators to lesser cases.
When he first joined SECO, one of his duties was to check
the design of many pavilions for the 1958 Brussels World
Exhibition. Among these was the outstanding structure des-
ignated the Atomium, which has become the “banner” of
Brussels as the capital of Belgium as well as Europe.
He was active in a number of other organizations as
well, such as the International Association for Bridges and
Structural Engineering (IABSE), the European Convention for
Constructional Steelwork (ECCS), and the North American
Structural Stability Research Council (SSRC). He chaired the
scientific committee of the AILg (l’Association des Ingénieurs
Diplômés de l’Université de Liège [Association of Civil
Engineer Graduates of the University of Liège]) and was presi-
dent of the association from 1979 to 1982.
Among Professor Massonnet’s professional awards were
the AILg Gold Medal (1955) and the Louis Baes Award of
the Belgian Royal Academy (1963). He was also honored by
election as a foreign member of the Accademia di Scienze e
Lettere, Instituto Lombardo, Milan (1974); foreign associate
of the US National Academy of Engineering (1978); foreign
member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1980); and hon-
orary member of the Polish Association of Theoretical and
Applied Mechanics (1982). He received honorary doctorates
from Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg (1976) and
the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich; 1977).

In 1984, on the occasion of his retirement and his 70th birth-

day, he received, in homage to his career, a festschrift from
friends and colleagues, titled Verba Volant, Scripta Manent
(“words fly away, writings remain”).
Charles Massonnet married Joanna Lisette Paula Marx in
April 1946. Over the years they extended their hospitality
to colleagues, friends, visitors, and collaborators (the pres-
ent writer included), either in their apartment with a sweep-
ing view of the river Meuse or in their country house in hilly
Nandrin.
Lisette died in 2009 at the age of 84. Lisette and Charles
are survived by sons André and Jean-Charles and daughter
Suzon.
Charles Massonnet’s cheerful attitude, prodigious memory,
and unbounded curiosity gained him friends and admirers
wherever he went.



H U D S O N M AT L O C K
1919–2015
Elected in 1982
“Outstanding leadership in research and design related to offshore engineering.”
BY DAVID K. MATLOCK AND RICHARD L. TUCKER
LEE HUDSON MATLOCK JR. (known by all as Hudson

Matlock)—husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather,
educator, engineer, pilot, US Army Air Corps veteran, and
friend and mentor to many—passed away October 8, 2015, at
the age of 95.
Hudson was born December 9, 1919, to Lee and Charlie
Matlock in Floresville, Texas, a small farming community
southeast of San Antonio. He was the oldest of five children.
After high school in Floresville, he attended Texas A&I College
in Kingsville (1936–1939); during summers he worked for the
Texas Highway Department (1936 and 1938) and as a member
of a survey crew at the Sacramento Air Depot (1937).
He launched his career in civil engineering in 1939 as a soils
laboratory assistant in the materials and test division of the
Texas Highway Department. In 1941 he became an inspector
of construction in the San Antonio office of the US Engineering
Department.
During World War II he joined the US Army Air Corps
(1942–1945), learned to fly (which became a passion later in
his life), and served as a 1st lieutenant unit flight instructor at
Goodfellow Field in San Angelo, Texas. His primary instruc-
tion plane was the BT13A. Toward the end of his Army career
he was transferred to Hobbs, New Mexico, where he became
233

a B-17 pilot and was preparing to head to the Pacific when the
war ended.
It was during his flight training that he began to hone his
teaching skills. He liked to tell the story that when cocky new
“hotshot” pilots were assigned to his class, he enjoyed taking
them up for some “aerobatic” flying to get their attention
(along with their stomachs) as a way to put them in the “right
frame of mind” for learning.
After the war he moved to Austin to complete his BS (1947)
and MS (1950) degrees in civil engineering at the University of
Texas (UT). He joined the College of Engineering as an instruc-
tor in 1948 and progressed through the ranks to become a pro-
fessor in 1965. From 1972 to 1976 he chaired the Department
of Civil Engineering. In 1986 he was named a Distinguished
College of Engineering Graduate, and in 2002, in recognition
of his accomplishments, his grateful students gave gener-
ously to establish the Hudson Matlock Professorial Endowed
Excellence Fund in Civil Engineering at UT Austin.
In 1977 he became vice president of research and devel-
opment at Fugro, which later became the Earth Technology
Corporation, in Long Beach, California, where he stayed until
he retired in 1985.
At UT he was a pioneer in developing analysis techniques
for advanced structural systems and complex structure-soil
interaction systems. He designed one of the first flexible con-
figuration civil engineering structure laboratories based on
servohydraulic systems, initially configured with analog con-
trols and eventually with digital control systems adaptable to
new computer technologies that were evolving at the time.
His interest in soil mechanics, foundation engineering, and
structures with applications to offshore engineering evolved
early in his career. For example, as described in 1985 by UT
professor Lymon C. Reese,
Matlock and his associates instrumented one of the piles sup-

porting a platform in deep water in Block 42 in the Gulf of
Mexico in 1954, and since that time faculty at UT have done
scores of research studies for the offshore industry. Matlock

HUDSON MATLOCK 235
and Dr. Eugene A. Ripperger, professor of engineering

mechanics, in the late 1950s carried out a landmark test pro-
gram on piles under lateral loading. The testing resulted in rec-
ommendations for the design of piles in soft clay under lateral
loading; the recommendations were adopted by the American
Petroleum Institute and have served as the basis for the design
of piles for offshore structures at worldwide locations.
The latter stages of Hudson’s UT career occurred during the

expansion of the digital computer era. He was an early leader
in development of finite element analysis techniques, particu-
larly for beam columns, grid beams, slabs, and other structure-
soil applications.
His lasting contributions to offshore engineering were
acknowledged by the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE) with the J. James R. Croes Medal in 1968 (shared with
William R. Hudson), and many years later two of his impor-
tant papers critical to analyses of soil-piling interactions
in offshore structures were cited for inclusion in the ASCE
Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) Hall of Fame Awards:
“Correlation for Design of Laterally Loaded Piles in Soft Clay”
(OTC paper 1204, May 1970) and “Application of Model
Pile Tests to Axial Pile Design” (coauthored with J. Dewaine
Bogard; OTC paper 6376, 1990).
Hudson was an ASCE fellow, a member of Tau Beta Pi,
a Professional Engineer, and an active member of the Texas
Society of Professional Engineers, Society for Experimental
Stress Analysis, and International Society for Soil Mechanics
and Foundation Engineering. He also served on several com-
mittees, including the National Research Council Marine
Board Committee on Offshore Energy Technology and Panel
on Certification of Offshore Structures.
While in the Army Air Corps, on November 25, 1942, he
married Harriett Nadine Kidder (1919–1996) of Mercedes,
Texas. They enjoyed 53 years together and had two sons,
John Hudson Matlock and David Kidder Matlock. Hudson
was very proud of the fact that both pursued very success-
ful careers in engineering after having completed advanced

degrees, John a PhD in materials science at UT Austin and

David a PhD in materials science and engineering at Stanford
University. He was also proud of the fact that he was one of
the few NAE members who had a son elected to the Academy
(David in 2003).
In 1965 he decided to take up flying again (something he
had missed since leaving the Army Air Corps) and joined the
UT Flying Club. His participation in the club lasted only about
a year until his desire to fly more led him to purchase his first
airplane—and to convince Harriett to learn to fly. Together
they flew all over the United States; to Uruapan, Mexico,
where he took a sabbatical semester; and eventually on a trip
through Central America, Venezuela, and back to Florida by
island hopping through the Caribbean.
In 1985 Hudson and Harriett moved back to the Texas Hill
Country they loved. They retired in Kerrville in a home on the
airstrip at Tierra Linda Ranch (TLR), a former 2,900-acre ranch
about 70 miles west of San Antonio that had been subdivided
into a multihome community.
In retirement Hudson had the opportunity to apply his
civil engineering knowledge to help improve the TLR infra-
structure. His analysis of the earthen dams on the two main
ranch lakes led to important modifications and increased dam
safety, both of which led to changes in the state of Texas hazard
level classifications of the dams and corresponding reduc-
tions in operating and insurance costs to TLR. He was also
instrumental in helping design a systematic maintenance pro-
gram for TLR’s asphalt road surfaces to ensure maintenance of
a quality internal road system.
Hudson had to quit flying at the age of 90 and sold his air-
plane (now his third) in the spring of 2011. He lived on the
ranch until December 2014, when he relocated to Colorado to
be near family.
Harriett passed away in 1996. Hudson is survived by sons
John (Kathe) and David (Diane); grandchildren Deb, Dan,
Michelle, and Joey; and five great-grandchildren.
His greatest legacy lives in those who were influenced by
him, some of whom offered their own observations: “My

HUDSON MATLOCK 237
engineering career was enhanced by my study and work

under Hudson”; “Everyone who knew him has nothing but
sunshine in their eyes when they speak of him”; “He was truly
the most honorable, kind, and honest gentleman that I have
ever met”; and “the end of an era, they don’t make them like
that any more.”


WA LT E R G . M AY
1918–2015
Elected in 1978
“Contributions to engineering theory and practice in the fields of fluidization,

high-energy propellants, LNG technology, and centrifugal isotope separation.”
BY RICHARD ALKIRE
WALTER GRANT MAY was born in Saskatoon,

askatchewan, Canada, on November 28, 1918, and passed
S
away in Virginia Beach on February 18, 2015, at the age of 96.
He graduated in 1939 with a bachelor of science degree in
chemical engineering from the University of Saskatchewan.
His career in the oil industry began that year, when he took
a post with British American Oil in Moose Jaw as an assis-
tant chemist (there were only two). He returned the following
year to the university, where he received a master of science
degree in chemistry (1942), and soon after joined the faculty as
a professor of chemical engineering. After the war he contin-
ued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and earned a doctor of science degree in chemical engineering.
In 1948 he started working with Standard Oil (now Exxon)
Research and Engineering Company, where he became knowl-
edgable about fuel processing and process design, particularly
reaction kinetics and reactor design associated with gas-solid
fluidized beds. Beginning with coal gasification applications
and continuing over many years, he carried out basic studies
of fluid motion in bubbles and drops and their relation to mass
transfer coefficients in gas-solid contacting in fluidized beds
at plant scale. While fluid beds are the most effective way of
transporting solids in processes where this is required, they
239

were not well-defined fluids. May was able to characterize their

fluid properties by using mixtures of solids, with coarse solids
serving as a probe to evaluate the “fluid” properties of the fine
material. He applied these methods to particle separation pro-
cesses as well as to various kinds of chemically active fluid
beds such as those associated with flue gas desulfurization.
Perhaps May’s most publicly visible achievement was his
work and leadership in the field of high-energy solid rocket
propellants associated with the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) in 1959–1963. He was the first chair of ARPA’s
Joint Army, Navy, Air Force (JANAF) Thermochemical Panel
and subsequently arranged a contract with Dow Chemical Co.,
with funds from the JANAF budget, to publish the JANAF
Thermochemical Tables. These publications became arguably
the best single compilation of thermodynamic data anywhere.
Safety issues associated with liquefied natural gas (LNG),
along with research on the underlying mechanisms and scal-
ing laws, were a priority for May. In 1969 his group began
running warranty tests on large-scale LNG plants, includ-
ing refrigeration, compressor, and plan capacity assessments.
Those measurements of radiation from very large fires became
the design basis for setting the spacing between storage tanks.
Extensive safety tests were carried out to assess vapor disper-
sion downwind from large spills on water and its dependence
on evaporation rate and weather-related mixing conditions.
These observations led to the first semiquantitative explana-
tion of flameless explosions.
With Exxon Nuclear starting in 1973, May worked in the
area of nuclear fuels, particularly uranium enrichment pro-
cesses. His work established the general form for design of
cascades of centrifuges as well as the principles that influ-
enced internal flow and thus the optimal reflux ratio. He was
responsible for organizing Exxon Nuclear’s patent effort on
centrifuges.
As senior science advisor at Exxon Research and Engineering
Company from 1976 to 1983, he occupied the highest rung on
the technical ladder. During that time he started an applied
mathematics group that contributed to bringing the Athabasca

WALTER G. MAY 241
Tar Sands work to a reasonable engineering design conclu-

sion. Other engineering projects that benefitted from that
group included the design of a laser-isotope enrichment plant
and an assessment of costs to the operating variables, and
work on magnetically stabilized fluidized beds for separation
processes.
Based on his considerable experience he was appointed
to serve on a number of National Research Council com-
mittees: on Safety of Ship-Transport Liquefied Natural Gas
(1978); on Separation Science and Technology (1983–1987);
on Alternative Chemical Demilitarization Technologies
(1992–1993); on Review and Evaluation of the Army Chemical
Stockpile Disposal Program (1993–1999); on Decontamination
and Decommissioning of Uranium Enrichment Facilities
(1993–1996); on Evaluation of Alternative Chemical Disposal
Technologies (1995–1996); on Evaluation of Alternative
Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical
Weapons (1997–2000); and on Evaluation of Chemical Events
at Army Chemical Agent Disposal Facilities (2001–2002).
Concurrent with his tenure at Exxon, May held faculty
positions at Stevens Institute of Technology (1966–1972) and
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1972–1977). He was a fellow
of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and received
its 1989 Award in Chemical Engineering Practice for “sub
stantial lifetime achievement . . . in industrial chemical engi-
neering practice.”
After his retirement from Exxon in 1983 he joined the faculty
of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of
Illinois. With the enthusiasm of a youth, he restudied the under-
graduate curriculum and took the examination to become a reg-
istered Professional Engineer in the state of Illinois.
Turning his full attention to the undergraduates, he brought
world-class expertise to teaching courses in process design,
thermodynamics, reactor design, mass transfer, and indus-
trial chemistry. The students responded with enthusiasm and
genuine admiration, bordering on awe, to the combination of
his extensive experience along with a warm and thoroughly
engaging manner.

May had a deadpan look and a sly sense of humor that

would reveal itself only after you thought for a moment about
what he had just said, at which point he would take gentle
delight in watching the realization dawn.
His first wife, the mother of his children, predeceased him;
his second wife, Helen Dickerson May, passed away in 2014.
He is survived by children Jack (Lea) May, Douglas (Joanne)
May, and Caroline (Jay) Baraki, five grandchildren, and one
great-grandchild. His son Jack remembers that his father
enjoyed playing golf, usually early Sunday morning, and both

water and snow skiing. His hobbies included a love of travel—
he traveled around the world, from Canada to Europe to the
Middle East, including Libya (for EXXON) and Egypt for plea-
sure. He also frequented the theater.
He was a master at relating to whoever his audience was
even if he was with a 4-year-old, he would make a game of
Candyland fun by placing simple bets!
For dad, life was about learning. He loved to learn . . .
he even took a French class at the Community College in
Champaign, IL, when he was in his mid-80s.



J A M E S W. M AY E R
1930–2013
Elected in 1984
“For original contributions to ion implantation, Rutherford

backscattering spectrometry, and other major aspects of
solid-state engineering research and education.”
BY THOMAS E. EVERHART
J AMES WALTER MAYER excelled as a scientist, engineer,

and mentor, and as a family man and friend. He was born
April 24, 1930, in Chicago and passed away June 14, 2013, in
the presence of family in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where he and
his wife had retired. He was 83.
After his PhD degree in physics from Purdue University
and then Army service, he joined the Hughes Research
Laboratories. Subsequently, he started his career in academia
as a professor of electrical engineering at the California
Institute of Technology in 1967, where in addition to research
and teaching he became Master of Student Houses.
From Caltech he moved in 1980 to Cornell University’s
College of Engineering as the Francis Norwood Bard Professor
of Materials Engineering before becoming director of the
Microscience and Technology Program in 1989. In 1992 he
accepted the position of director of the Center for Solid State
Science at Arizona State University (ASU), where he went on
to become a Regents’ Professor in 1994 and Galvin Professor of
Science and Engineering in 1997. During his career he authored
or coauthored more than 750 papers, 12 books, and 12 patents.
A more detailed memorial is available in the Materials Research Society’s

MRS Bulletin, October 2013, vol. 38, no. 10, pp. 774–775.
245

He made several key scientific and technological advances.

In the 1950s his work was essential to the development
of semiconductor detectors, used for measuring the energy of
energetic particles and ionizing radiation. He helped develop
Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) into a major
analytic tool and used it to analyze many aspects of semi-
conductor growth, disorder, and several other properties of
materials growth. He was a key contributor to the develop-
ment of ion implantation to dope semiconductors, discovering
methods of annealing that removed the disorder created by
the implantation and making that technique a practical fabri-
cation tool for integrated circuits.
In recognition of his achievements and contributions to the
field, he was selected for the Materials Research Society’s Von
Hippel Award in 1981, for having done “research on implan-
tation that identified the damage and the epitaxial regrowth
phenomena crucial to the semiconductor industry, and pio-
neered the use of ion beam techniques for materials analy-
sis.” He was elected a member of the National Academy of
Engineering, and he was a fellow of the American Physical
Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Jim Mayer was an excellent teacher of both undergraduate
and graduate students, often returning to his lab at night to
work with the latter. In addition to more than 40 graduate
students, he mentored visitors and postdocs, most of whom
became lifelong friends. And he established the Kaiserliche
Königliche Böhmische Physical Society to encourage informa-
tion exchange between scientists and engineers involved in
such research.
Among his various interests (and publications) was anal-
ysis of paint pigments and ink, applying science to art. His
expertise was such that he was invited to lecture at the Louvre.
He also developed a course at ASU on “Patterns in Nature,”
which later became a statewide online course, complete with
a laboratory on wheels that could be used by K–12 students
around the state. While at Cornell, he helped his wife start an
elementary school that was quite successful.

JAMES W. MAYER 247
Jim Mayer leaves behind his wife, Betty (née Billmire), four
children, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren,
as well as many colleagues and students who are better sci-
entists, engineers, and human beings because they knew him
and were influenced by him.


BRAMLETTE McCLELLAND
1920–2010
Elected in 1979
“Pioneering efforts in the practice of geotechnical engineering, and

contributions to improvements in the design of ocean structures.”
BY ALAN G. YOUNG
THOMAS BRAMLETTE McCLELLAND, or “Bram” as he

preferred to be called, died April 14, 2010, in Houston, at the
age of 89. Born December 16, 1920, in Newnan, Georgia, to
Chalmer Kirk McClelland and Annie Hibernia McClelland
(née Bramlette), he was reared in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where
his father was a professor in soil agronomy at the University
of Arkansas.
Bram earned his bachelor of science in civil engineering
from the University of Arkansas in 1940 and his master’s in
civil engineering from Purdue University in 1942. After gradu-
ation he relocated to work for the city of Houston on the San
Jacinto River Project. He started a new company with a part-
ner in 1946, Greer and McClelland.
In 1955 he founded and was president of McClelland
Engineers Inc. From its humble start in Houston the company
expanded to 14 offices around the world. Its technical contri-
butions to offshore foundation design practice were a signifi-
cant factor in the development of marine petroleum resources
worldwide.
Bram’s leadership skills attracted senior fellow engineers to
join his company—John A. Focht Jr., Robert L. Perkins, and
William J. Emrich, and a team of other geotechnical engineering
249

professionals supported his pioneering efforts to enhance the

practice of offshore geotechnical engineering.
The offshore industry’s state of knowledge was in its
infancy in the areas of offshore engineering geology, site
investigation methods, laboratory testing methods appropri-
ate for marine sediments, and analytical methods for foun-
dation design. In the tradition of other early pioneers, Bram
brought ingenuity, leadership skills, a zest for knowledge,
and determination in the development of simple, logical, and
innovative solutions for a wide range of extremely complex
offshore problems.
He led ground-breaking efforts in the late 1940s to develop
methods for conducting site investigations from a floating
vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. He did the first site investiga-
tion for offshore pile design in 1947 for the California Co.
(Chevron) working from a small temporary platform with
a portable drilling rig. Recognizing the importance of high-
quality sampling and in situ testing operations, he was a pio-
neer in promoting and overseeing the development of much
of the equipment that improved the state of practice over the
past 65 years.
He helped establish the first design practice for offshore
piles and other foundation types. His leadership helped moti-
vate oil companies to fund research programs investigating
the performance of offshore piles exposed to lateral and axial
loading under cyclic and extreme hurricane conditions. The
first offshore pile design standard was written with his help
and later adopted by the American Petroleum Institute as its
recommended guidance for the offshore industry. He worked
with the National Science Foundation to establish the Offshore
Technology Research Center at Texas A&M University and the
University of Texas at Austin.
His contributions to our profession extended over almost
five decades, during which he wrote numerous papers, served
on many technical committees, and gave lectures to universi-
ties and professional societies. He published over 25 papers
applicable to offshore geotechnics during the 20 years before
his retirement. It is important to emphasize that he had no

BRAMLETTE McCLELLAND 251
interest in simply being published, but that every one of his

papers clearly benefits the development of the offshore marine
geosciences.
Two papers received coveted awards from the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE): “Soil Modulus for Laterally
Loaded Piles,” coauthored with Focht, received the James
Laurie Prize; and “Problems in Design and Installation of
Offshore Piles,” coauthored with Focht and Emrich, received
the ASCE State of the Art of Civil Engineering Award. In
addition to these awards, he was the Ninth Terzaghi Lecturer
in 1972, giving a paper and lecture titled “Design of Deep
Penetration Piles for Ocean Structures.”
For his outstanding technical accomplishments, Bram was
elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1979 and
became a Distinguished Member of ASCE in 1986. He was
designated a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus by Purdue
University in 1965, elected to the Engineering Hall of Fame
at the University of Arkansas in 1972, and received an honor-
ary doctor of engineering degree from Purdue University in
1984. He received the prestigious Distinguished Achievement
Award from the Offshore Technology Conference in both 1986
and 1994.
He was a founding board member of the Association of Soil
and Foundation Engineers (ASFE) and a founder and chair
of the board of Terra Insurance Company. These two entities
helped educate practicing engineers on loss prevention to
limit their professional liability exposure and provided liabil-
ity insurance required to practice engineering in our litigious
world. He also served on the Marine Board of the National
Research Council, including a term as chair in 1985–1986.
He is credited with bringing the concept of “organizational
peer review” to the design profession via ASFE. On October
11, 2005, ASCE recognized Bram and ASFE for their visionary
leadership in developing the peer review program, which was
celebrating its 25th anniversary. ASCE endorsed Engineering
News Record’s recognition of this program as one of the 125
most significant construction industry innovations of the prior
125 years. Bram was humbled by the recognition and said, “Of

all the contributions I’ve tried to make to my profession, peer

review has been my proudest accomplishment.”
Bram’s strong character, ground-breaking efforts, and
numerous professional contributions explain why the
International Society of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical
Engineering (ISSMGE) decided to honor him by establishing
the Bramlette McClelland Lecture. His commitment to our pro-
fession and example of high standards throughout his career
were an inspiration to his peers and young engineers who
knew him. His pioneering contributions will be honored in the
future through the selection of other experts in geotechnical
engineering to present the Bramlette McClelland Lecture.
Bram’s lack of pretension, devotion to his fellow man, and
dedication to our profession were his guideposts and a source
of inspiration to all. He was an excellent speaker, writer, edu-
cator, artist, visionary, researcher, and, of course, engineer
who motivated hundreds of geotechnical engineers to pursue
excellence while applying sound, practical approaches to
our engineering practice. He possessed an uncanny skill for
listening attentively to all people, while motivating them to
develop their own solutions to problems that often seemed
overwhelming to them.
Bram was a remarkable person with a broad range of inter-
ests and hobbies, and he was totally devoted to his family,
church, community, and profession. A founding member of
Emerson Unitarian Church in Houston, he was president of
the board of trustees for several years, and was also active
as a leader in the Boy Scouts and other civic and community
activities.
Bram is survived by his beloved wife of 60 years, Virginia;
their five children—Darcy, Tom, Terry, Jeff, and Martha; and
seven grandchildren.



E D WA R D J . M c C L U S K E Y
1929–2016
Elected in 1998
“For logic design, computer engineering, and engineering education.”
BY JEFFREY D. ULLMAN
EDWARD JOSEPH McCLUSKEY was a leader in digital

electronics and professor of electrical engineering and of com-
puter science at Stanford University. He died February 13,
2016, at the age of 86.
Ed was born October 16, 1929, in New York City. He grad-
uated from Bowdoin College in 1953 and in 1956 earned his
doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where he developed what became
known as the Quine-McCluskey algorithm for the design of
minimum-cost digital logic circuits. This was the first sys-
tematic approach to logic circuit design and is still used and
taught today.
Ed began his professional career in 1955 at Bell Laboratories
before moving in 1959 to the Department of Electrical
Engineering at Princeton University, where he built a gradu-
ate research program in digital systems. He also established
Princeton’s Computer Center in 1962 and was its first director.
He was promoted to full professor in 1963.
In 1966 he left to become professor of electrical engineering
and computer science at Stanford University, where, in 1969,
he founded the Digital Systems Laboratory (later Computer
Systems Lab), at the time one of the five divisions of the
Electrical Engineering Department. He served as director of
255

this laboratory until 1978. In addition, he initiated Stanford’s

“Computer Forum” industrial affiliates program and served
as its director from 1968 to 1978. And in 1976 he organized
his personal research program into the Center for Reliable
Computing, which was the focus of much of his research pro-
gram at Stanford.
During his career at Princeton and Stanford, he was doctoral
advisor to 75 students, several of whom are now members of
the NAE and many of whom hold key positions in industry
and academia.
In addition to his publication of a major book in the field,
Introduction to the Theory of Switching Circuits (McGraw-Hill,
1966), Ed wrote widely cited papers on topics such as design
of circuits for testability, hazards in logic circuits, probabilistic
testing, on-board self-testing, and generation of test sets.
He was made a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1965 and of the Association
for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 1994. He is also recog-
nized as the father of the IEEE Computer Society, created in
1970 thanks to his efforts. He was the society’s first president
(1970–1971).
Ed received many awards and honors: the IEEE’s John von
Neumann Medal in 2012 for “fundamental contributions that
shaped the design and testing of digital systems,” Emanuel
Piore Award in 1996 for “pioneering and fundamental con-
tributions to design automation and fault tolerant comput-
ing,” and Centennial Medal and Computer Society Technical
Achievement Award in Testing, both in 1984; the EuroASIC
90 Prize in 1990 for “outstanding contributions to logic syn-
thesis”; and in 2008 the ACM-SIGDA Pioneering Achievement
Award. His contributions to education were recognized by the
ACM-SIGCSE Award in 1990 and IEEE Taylor Booth Award in
1991. He received honorary doctorates from the University of
Grenoble and his alma mater, Bowdoin College.
Ed was known for his unusual sense of humor and eccen-
tricities, such as his collection of exotic hats, which he wore
periodically. He is also remembered for the green school bus
that he bought and used to transport his family from Princeton

EDWARD J. McCLUSKEY 257
to Stanford. The bus became a fixture at Stanford and was used

for camping trips for many years.
Ed was married to Roberta Jean Marie Erickson and they
had six children: Edward Robert (Ted), Rosemary, Therese,
Joseph, David, and Kevin. They divorced and he later married
Lois Thornhill. He is survived by Lois and five of his six chil-
dren (Rosemary died in 2011) as well as 11 grandchildren and
one great-grandchild.
Much loved by his students and colleagues, Ed is greatly
missed.


DOUGLAS C. MOORHOUSE
1926–2012
Elected in 1982
“Innovative technical and managerial leadership in geotechnical engineering,

earth sciences, and environmental systems in response to the needs of society.”
BY RUDOLPH BONAPARTE
DOUGLAS CECIL MOORHOUSE, a leader in the

eotechnical/geocivil engineering, earth sciences, and envi
g
ronmental consulting profession and long-time president and
CEO of the international consulting and engineering firm
Woodward-Clyde Group, died March 14, 2012, at the age of 86.
Doug was born February 24, 1926, to Cecil and Linda
Moorhouse in Oakland and grew up in the San Francisco Bay
Area. As a child he was very close to his father, whose experi-
ences during the Great Depression left an impression on Doug
about work ethic and dealing with adversity that influenced
him throughout his life.
Doug graduated from high school in 1944 and a week later
joined the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program. By
the end of the year, he was involved in heavy combat along
the front lines of France in World War II. He was seriously
wounded in battle and his life was saved by two fellow sol-
diers who pulled him to safety. He received the Purple Heart
among other medals from the US Army. His experiences in
the war and brush with death left indelible marks on him and
influenced both his worldview and perspectives on human
behavior and morality.
After the war, Doug returned to the Bay Area and married
his first wife, Donis L. Slinker of Pasadena. He also entered
259

the Civil Engineering Program at the University of California,

Berkeley, receiving his BS degree in 1950. He was a good stu-
dent at Berkeley and developed a strong interest in the rel-
atively young discipline of soil mechanics and foundation
engineering. His teachers included Richard J. Woodward Jr.,
Ned P. Clyde, and Arnold Olitt, all of whom went on to found
in 1950 the geotechnical engineering firm that later became
Woodward-Clyde Consultants (WCC).
Upon graduation, Doug took a position as a research engi-
neer with the State of California Division of Highways before
joining his former professors at WCC in 1954. He stayed with
the organization for the next 38 years, quickly establishing
himself as a top engineer, manager, and natural leader. He
became deeply involved in a wide range of projects through-
out California, starting as WCC’s Chief Highway and Airport
Engineer in the firm’s Oakland office before relocating in 1959
to San Diego to become branch manager of WCC’s office there.
In 1962 he moved his family east to establish a WCC office
in the New York–New Jersey metropolitan area and until 1973
was president and CEO of the regional WCC operating com-
pany Woodward-Moorhouse & Associates, head quartered
in Clifton, NJ. He also attended Harvard University’s
Soil Mechanics Program in 1963 and Advanced Business
Management Program in 1973.
In 1973 Doug and his family moved back to the San
Francisco Bay Area when he became president of the entire
set of Woodward-Clyde companies (Woodward-Clyde Group,
Inc.) (WCGI) and then, from 1976 to 1991, president and
CEO. Under his leadership, WCGI grew to more than 3,000
employees and expanded from its roots in geotechnical engi-
neering to provide consulting and engineering services across
a much wider range of disciplines, including the broader earth
sciences field, environmental sciences and engineering, and
water resources engineering.
In environmental consulting, Doug was one of the first
leaders in the business to recognize the significance of the 1969
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and to build an
environmental consulting business based on NEPA and other

DOUGLAS C. MOORHOUSE 261
related federal and state environmental requirements. In his

professional practice, Doug had a diversified background in
civil and geotechnical engineering. He had responsibility for
the geotechnical engineering aspects in the design and con-
struction of buildings, nuclear and fossil fuel plants, dams,
highways, railroads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and water and
wastewater treatment plants.
Major projects that he was associated with include the
Aswan Dam, Trans-Alaska pipeline, a new 1,600 km railroad
line (Morocco), Auburn Dam seismic evaluation (California),
Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant (Ohio), and nuclear waste
repository siting studies for the US Department of Energy’s
Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation.
On the Trans-Alaska pipeline project, he made major con-
tributions to the innovative design of thermal piles used to
maintain permafrost conditions along portions of the pipeline
alignment. He was also substantially involved in successfully
addressing earthquake fault hazards and risks to the pipeline.
Doug was an early champion and adopter of novel tech-
niques to improve the performance and reliability of engi-
neered systems and structures. As a primary result of his
efforts, WCC was one of the first civil engineering firms in
the country to bring decision and risk analysis techniques to
siting studies for critical infrastructure such as large dams and
nuclear power plants. Doug was also heavily involved in pro-
viding technical support to resolve claims involving dam and
reservoir failures, foundation failures, and large-project resi-
dential construction defect cases.
Throughout his career Doug was very active in service to the
profession. He was president of the board of directors of the
Hazardous Waste Action Coalition, chair of the Task Committee
on International Competitiveness for the American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE), member of the planning cabinet of the
American Consulting Engineers Council (ACEC), member of
the board of directors of the UC Berkeley Engineering Alumni
Society, and senior fellow of the California Council on Science
and Technology. He also served on the National Research
Council Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems’

Advisory Board on the Built Environment (1983–1984) and

Building Research Board (1984–1985).
Doug received many awards and honors, including, in 1969,
ASCE’s Wesley W. Horner Award for the paper he coauthored
with David M. Greer, “Engineering-Geologic Studies for Sewer
Projects.” In 1972 he received the ACEC Award for Engineering
Excellence for geotechnical and earthquake engineering projects
at the Davis-Besse and Cooper nuclear power stations. He was
elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1982.
Doug had two children from his first marriage, Scott S.
Moorhouse and Janice L. Moorhouse. In 1987 he married
Dorothy Otis and, after his retirement from WCGI in 1992, they
bought land and built a home in Calistoga, California, in the
Knights Valley region. They developed it into vineyard prop-
erty, which they called the Double D Ranch, and Doug became
a wine grape grower for a number of years. He also served as
a board member of the San Francisco Bay Area Alzheimer’s
Association, a cause he cared deeply about and worked hard
to support.
Through the years, he enjoyed as hobbies automobile racing
as well as sailboat racing and cruising in San Francisco Bay. In
his retirement he took up fly fishing, a hobby that he pursued
with Dorothy. He also became an avid reader and student of
history.
Doug was an exceptional consulting engineer, business
executive, and human being. He worked tirelessly, demanded
excellence in himself and others, was a tremendous leader
and visionary, and was a strong mentor to many. Despite
his commanding personal presence, he questioned authority
and demanded independent thinking. Complementing these
strengths, he was also compassionate and caring, and helped
many people in need of support. Those who met Doug remem-
bered him.
Doug’s second wife Dorothy passed away on February 15,
2015. He is survived by his children Scott (in Denver) and
Janice (in Santa Rosa, California), and by Dorothy’s daughters
Jane Matthews (in Anchorage), Lee Otis (in Seattle), and Edie
Otis (in Sebastopol, California), and six grandchildren.



J O H N W. M O R R I S
1921–2013
Elected in 1979
“Leadership in the conduct of engineering programs of national significance.”
BY HENRY HATCH AND HANS VAN WINKLE
The nation lost a patriot and a great engineer with the

passing of LTG(R) JOHN WOODLAND MORRIS, who died
August 20, 2013, at the age of 91.
Born September 10, 1921, to John Earl and Alice Morris
in Princess Anne, Maryland, Jack graduated from Charlotte
Hall Military Academy and then attended Western Maryland
College. In July 1940 he entered the US Military Academy at
West Point, where he was a cadet captain and superintendent
of Sunday Schools, and lettered in track, a sport at which he
excelled. Because of World War II, his class was accelerated
and he graduated June 6, 1943, a year early, as a second lieu-
tenant in the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
He was assigned to Guam to oversee the construction of air-
fields for B-29 Superfortresses raiding Japan. At war’s end, he
was assigned to the Philippines where he met 1st Lieutenant
Geraldine (Gerry) Ludwig, a flight nurse in the Army Air
Corps and native of Wilmington, North Carolina. She had
attended James Walker School of Nursing and was a registered
nurse. They were married May 12, 1947, at St. John’s Episcopal
Church in Wilmington.
General Morris had highly successful assignments, in both
the USACE and the Army. He commanded the 8th Engineer
Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division in Korea, and 18th Engineer
265

Brigade during combat operations in Vietnam; and he served

as a regimental commander and deputy commandant of
cadets at the Military Academy. At the Pentagon he used his
considerable skills as deputy chief of legislative liaison, a key
position that links the military with Congress.
His USACE assignments were weighted heavily toward
civil works. His first was as assistant district engineer in the
Savannah District, Georgia. Later, as district engineer for
the Tulsa District, he was highly instrumental in bringing nav-
igation to Oklahoma through construction of the McClellan-
Kerr Arkansas River Waterway. While there he quickly
developed the low-key, humor-laced, friendly and approach-
able personality that endeared him to citizens of the Southwest
and their political leaders. Later, these skills served him well
as the Missouri River division engineer in Omaha.
Subsequently assigned to the Corps Headquarters in
Washington, DC, he became director of civil works, respon-
sible for the Corps’s construction, operations, maintenance,
and regulatory functions throughout the United States. These
functions included navigation, both deep channel and inland,
flood control, and other water-related services such as recre-
ational use and water supply.
The Army recognized his tremendous accomplishments
and potential by first selecting him as deputy chief of engi-
neers and then in 1976 as 44th chief of engineers, when he
got his third star as a lieutenant general. Perhaps his greatest
accomplishment in this role was convincing the Department
of the Army to include USACE as one of its major commands.
This increased the Corps’s stature in the Department of
Defense and helped pave the way for its leadership in military
and national affairs.
As chief of engineers, Jack’s service and accomplish-
ments were crowned with multiple awards and widespread
recognition. He was elected to the National Academy of
Engineering, the National Academy of Construction, and Tau
Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society. In 1996 he
received the Carroll H. Dunn Award of Excellence from the
Construction Industry Institute, its highest award, and was

JOHN W. MORRIS 267
selected by his NAE peers for the prestigious Founders Award

(since renamed the Simon Ramo Founders Award). The Army
Engineer Association chose him for its highest award, the Gold
de Fleury Medal (1997), and he was elected a distinguished
member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
ASCE also selected him for its most prestigious individual
award, the Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) award
for lifetime achievement in government (2010). His many mili-
tary decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, the
Army’s highest noncombat decoration, and multiple awards
of the Legion of Merit. In 1977 he was named “Construction
Man of the Year” by Engineering News-Record, the same year
he was recognized as Outstanding Engineer of the Year by
both the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society—these simul-
taneous awards have never been replicated. Among all his
honors, none was more cherished than his selection in 1989 as
a Distinguished Graduate of the US Military Academy.
General Morris was creative and innovative. With the con-
sent of and financial help from Congress he dispatched a ven-
erable Corps workboat, the Sergeant Floyd, to carry the Corps
story far and wide along the nation’s vast inland waterways
during the nation’s bicentennial celebration. His campaign,
“The Corps Cares,” mobilized the Corps workforce, military
and civilian, and energized and inspired them to expand
and improve their proud performance. He had a new idea a
minute—not all of them winners, but in total a list of massive
importance.
He retired with full military honors in 1980 after 37 years
of dedicated service. His selection of music to be played at the
parade marking the conclusion of his military career tends
to say it all. After the Ruffles and Flourishes and traditional
military march music, the US Army Band, at General Morris’
request, concluded by playing Frank Sinatra’s “I Did It My
Way.” A simpler and more fitting tribute to his military service
could not be imagined.
Desiring continued involvement in professional engi-
neering, General Morris started his own consulting firm
in Arlington, Virginia. He was so sensitive to even a hint of

impropriety that he rejected offers from companies in the

industry with which he had dealt while in the Corps, hence
his decision to go it alone. His decision was a good one and the
firm prospered, providing consulting services to over 50 firms,
many from overseas. Engagements were wide and varied; one
of the most interesting was the firm’s selection to develop
and present the state of Oklahoma’s proposal for design and
construction of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1987.
Texas got the job, but the Oklahoma proposal was praised for
its quality.
Jack was active in the academic world as well. He wrote
a course of instruction for a master’s degree in construc-
tion engineering management and was its first chair at the
University of Maryland. The university has since established
an annual scholarship in his name for a graduate student in
the Department of Engineering; it provides full tuition with
preference for students who are active duty, reserve, or prior
military service.
Active as he was, he found time to volunteer with the Boy
Scouts of America Council and with other professional, civic,
and charitable institutions. He was a member of the National
Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board and
the committees on Flood Control Alternatives in the American
River Basin, on Architect-Engineer Responsibilities, and
on Inspection for Quality Control on Federal Construction
Projects, among others.
Jack, or “the general” as his friends referred to him, was
devoted to his lovely wife, Gerry, and their children. Because
of her failing health he moved in 2004 to Plantation Village
Senior Living Community in Wilmington, North Carolina,
where he remained active and engaged. He visited Gerry
every day until her death in 2006, and felt the pain of her
passing for the rest of his life. He was a member of All Saints
Anglican Parish.
General Morris was buried at the US Military Academy on
September 4, 2013. He is survived by daughter Susan M. Nelson
(James A.); son John W. Morris III (Tamelia); grandchildren

JOHN W. MORRIS 269
John Nelson, Jessica M. Friley (James), Chelsea Morris, and

John W. Morris IV; and great-grandson Damon Friley.
The Corps, the Army, and the nation lost one of their most
distinguished military engineers.

Kistler Aerospace Corporation

GEORGE E. MUELLER
1918–2015
Elected in 1967
“Electronic systems engineering.”
BY ROBERT L. CRIPPEN
G EORGE EDWIN MUELLER, an excellent systems engineer

and an outstanding manager, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on
July 16, 1918. His parents, both born in the United States, were
of German descent. His mother, Ella Florence Bosch, worked
as a secretary before marriage; his father, Edwin Mueller, was
an electrician. George attended the Benton School in St. Louis
through the 8th grade, when his family moved to B el-Nor, a
small town outside St. Louis. There he became interested in
science fiction and in building model airplanes and radios. He
graduated from Normandy High School in 1934.
George initially planned to study aeronautical engineer-
ing, but the only college he could afford, the Missouri School
of Mines and Metallurgy at Rolla, did not offer that curricu-
lum. He began his studies in mechanical engineering but soon
switched to electrical.
When he graduated in 1939 the economy was still recover-
ing from the Great Depression and a suitable industry job did
not present itself. Having won one of the first television fellow
ships offered by RCA, he elected to attend graduate school at
Purdue University, where he participated in building a televi-
sion transmitter on campus. He received his master’s degree
in electrical engineering in 1940, joined Bell Labs, and moved
271

to New York City. A year later, he married Maude Rosenbaum,

from St. Louis.
At Bell Labs George conducted TV research until the nation
went to war in 1941, at which time he became heavily involved
with airborne technology and was given the task of building
Bell’s airborne radar. It became obvious that to have increased
responsibility at the Labs, he would need a PhD so, while con-
tinuing to work, he began work on a doctorate at Princeton on
a part-time basis.
At Bell he was encouraged to set up a vacuum tube lab and
run a communications group at Ohio State. He moved there
and taught electrical and systems engineering while doing his
PhD research on dielectric antennas. He received his doctorate
in physics in 1951.
In 1955 he took a one-year sabbatical to work at Ramo-
Wooldridge Corporation (which became TRW), where he was
involved with radar designs including the Bell Labs radar for
the Titan rocket. He also did work on inertial systems for the
rocket. He found this first exposure to the ballistic missile pro-
gram fascinating.
George returned to Ohio State but continued working as a
consultant for Ramo-Wooldridge until 1957, when he joined the
company full-time as director of the Electronics Laboratories,
which became the Space Technology Laboratories. He was vice
president for research and development and his responsibili-
ties grew as he worked on missile systems, where he became
an advocate for “all-up” testing.
In the early 1960s, shortly after President Kennedy announced
the goal of sending a man to the Moon and returning him safely
to Earth within the decade, NASA administrator James Webb
approached George about taking over the Office of Manned
Space Flight. After some inquiries George said he would accept
the job if the agency was restructured to make it more efficient.
That was done and in 1963 he became the associate adminis-
trator for the Office of Manned Space Flight, the office charged
with meeting the Moon objective.
Faced with slipping schedules and cost overruns, George
realized that the only way to achieve the objective was to use

GEORGE E. MUELLER 273
the “all-up” testing concept, which was contrary to Wernher

von Braun’s strategy of staged testing. He finally convinced
Dr. von Braun and others that “all up” was the only viable
approach, and full-up testing of the Saturn V was adopted.
This resulted in the third flight of the Saturn V sending Apollo 8
around the Moon.
In addition, George reorganized the Gemini and Apollo
Program Offices in accordance with his concept of system
management, providing much better program overview. And
he was responsible for getting the Air Force involved with
the program, bringing hundreds of experienced program
managers from the military, especially the Air Force, into the
civilian space agency.
During the Apollo Program, he recognized the need for a
post-Apollo program and promoted ideas for a manned lunar
base, a manned mission to Mars, and an orbiting space station.
Budgets did not allow for all of them and his plan was reduced
to the Apollo Applications Program that produced Skylab, the
nation’s first manned space station.
George Mueller is credited with initiating the Space Shuttle
Program. He was involved in many key decisions about the
shuttle and, although a promoter of a totally reusable space
transportation system, he remained a champion for the Space
Shuttle. He was also instrumental in making the decision that
the shuttle be a joint program of the Air Force and NASA.
In 1969, after the second successful lunar landing, he left
NASA to rejoin private industry. He worked for a short time
at General Dynamics Corporation and then became the chair,
president, and CEO of the System Development Corporation
(SDC) in Santa Monica. A spinoff of the Rand Corporation,
SDC developed the software for the North American air
defense systems primarily for use by the Air Force.
During George’s decade of leadership at SDC, he trans-
formed the company from a small struggling not-for-profit
into a solid commercial success. He also continued his involve-
ment in some of nation’s most important programs, serving
on government boards and committees at various agencies,
including NASA and the Air Force. He retired from SDC in

1984. In 1995 he joined Kistler Aerospace, a company commit-

ted to the development of a fully reusable launch vehicle, as its
CEO. He retired in 2006 at the age of 88.
George was active in many professional societies. He
served as president of both the International Academy of
Astronautics (IAA) and the American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics (AIAA). And in addition to his NAE
membership, he was an honorary fellow of the AIAA
and the British Interplanetary Society, and a fellow in the
IRE/IEEE, American Association for the Advancement of
Science, American Astronautical Society, Royal Aeronautical
Society, American Geophysical Union, and Institute for the
Advancement of Engineering.
Among his numerous awards were the National Medal
of Science, the Goddard Astronautics Award, and the
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Trophy for
Lifetime Achievement.
Dr. George E. Mueller passed away on October 12, 2015, at
the age of 97. He is survived by his wife of 37 years, the former
Darla Hix Schwartzman; two daughters from his first mar-
riage, Karen Hyvonen and Jean Porter; two stepchildren that
he helped raise, Wendy Schwartzman and Bill Schwartzman;
13 grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren.



H AY D N H . M U R R AY
1924–2015
Elected in 2003
“For pioneering work on the mineralogy and industrial applications of clays.”
BY JESSICA ELZEA KOGEL

HAYDN HERBERT MURRAY, renowned scientist, e ducator,

and pioneer in the field of applied clay mineralogy, died Febru-
ary 4, 2015, at the age of 90. He was recognized internationally
as the foremost expert in the world on applied clay mineralogy,
and was without peer in his knowledge of clay mineral deposits
worldwide.
His work on the mineralogical structure of various clay
types, particularly in the kaolin family of clays, was the pre-
cursor to current mineral processing and chemical treatment
practices. His leadership in applied clay mineralogy led to
four US patents and the development of innovative kaolin
products for paper coating and filling, enhanced single coat
coverage in paints, and expanded uses for clays in ceramics
and plastics as well as other commercial applications.
As an educator he turned out graduates who became indus-
try leaders working in virtually every corner of the world, from
the United States to Brazil, China, New Zealand, Germany,
and numerous other locales.
Haydn Murray was born August 31, 1924, in Kewanee,
Illinois, where he grew up, and attended high school in
nearby Toulon. Upon graduation in 1943 he enrolled at the
University of Minnesota, but in his first year joined the US
Army. He served from 1943 to 1946, the latter two years as a
277

first lieutenant with an engineering aviation battalion in the

Pacific. Before being shipped overseas he married his high
school sweetheart, Juanita Ara Appenheimer, in 1944.
After his discharge from the Army he enrolled in the
University of Illinois, where he earned his BS, MS, and PhD
degrees in geology, the latter in 1951. His doctoral disserta-
tion, “The Structure of Kaolinite and Its Relation to Acid
Treatment,” set the stage for the more than 200 peer-reviewed
papers he authored over his career.
Upon receipt of his PhD he joined the faculty at Indiana
University, accepting a joint position that included responsibil-
ities with the Indiana Geological Survey. During his first year
of teaching he became involved with the newly formed Clay
Minerals Committee, which was supported by the National
Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council. It
was from this group that the Clay Minerals Society came into
being, with Dr. Murray as one of the founding members. Since
its formation the society has been the preeminent technical
organization for the global clay mineralogy community.
In 1957 he resigned his positions at Indiana University and
the Indiana Geological Survey to become director of research
for Georgia Kaolin Company. He was attracted to the com-
pany as an opportunity to apply his research on factors influ-
encing high solids kaolin slurries.
At Georgia Kaolin he assembled a team of select scientists
and focused on developing new commercial applications for
kaolin and related clay minerals. His work was of such sig-
nificance that by 1961 he had been promoted to manager of
operations, in 1963 vice president of operations, and in 1964
he became executive vice president and chief operating officer.
Under his leadership the company expanded into bentonite
clay with the acquisition of Benton Clay Company (Casper,
Wyoming). Further company growth and expansion came
with the acquisitions of Southern Clay Products (Gonzales,
Texas); New Zealand China Clays (Maungaparerua); and a
joint venture with Amberger Kaolin (Herschau, Germany).
These acquisitions took the company into the production and
application of sodium and calcium bentonites, halloysite, and

HAYDN H. MURRAY 279
European kaolins. Dr. Murray also examined clay deposits in

Australia, Indonesia, Africa, Brazil, and Mexico.
In 1973 he returned to Indiana University as head of the
Geology Department, a position he held until he left in 1994.
While there he created the only academic program in applied
clay science in the United States. Over the years his stu-
dents completed research and theses in multiple countries
and on clays as diverse as kaolin, bentonite, halloysite, and
palygorskite. His 68 PhD and MS students, along with many
postdoctoral students, have gone on to occupy critical posi-
tions in industry, government, and academia throughout the
world.
Dr. Murray’s influence and reputation were such that
in 1973 he was called to chair the UNESCO Kaolin Genesis
Committee, which sponsored field excursions and conferences
to study and report on a wide variety of global kaolin d eposits.
In 1984 the US State Department’s Agency for International
Development (AID) engaged him to evaluate clay deposits in
Egypt, and in 1985 the Geologic Survey of Chile asked him to
evaluate several Chilean industrial minerals operations.
In 1994 he left teaching and formed H.H. Murray and
Associates to focus on research in applied clay mineral-
ogy. He and the firm were called on for assignments in
kaolinites in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and China;
bentonites in Argentina, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and
the United States; and palygorskites in China, Senegal, and the
United States.
Dr. Murray received numerous accolades and awards
and served in a variety of professional capacities. He was
the recipient of the Hardinge Award in Industrial Minerals
from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and
Petroleum Engineers (AIME; 1976); Marilyn and Sturges W.
Bailey Distinguished Member Award from the Clay Minerals
Society (1980), which also selected him as its Pioneer in Clay
Science Lecturer (2009); and University of Illinois Department
of Geology Alumni Achievement Award (2004).
In addition to his election to the NAE, he was recognized as
a distinguished member of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy,

and Exploration (SME; 1975) and honorary member of the

AIME (2014). He served as president of the Clay Minerals
Society (1965–1966), SME (1988), American Institute of
Professional Geologists (1991), and Association Internationale
pour l’Étude des Argiles (1993–1997). He received an honorary
doctor of science degree from the University of Buenos Aires
(2000).
In 2001 Haydn and Juanita established the Murray Chair of
Applied Clay Minerals at Indiana University. He continued his
research and field studies until his health no longer permitted.
This work included continued involvement in the study and
development of a large palygorskite deposit in China, explo-
ration for bauxite in Brazil and Suriname, and his ongoing
research on Georgia kaolins, their environment of deposition,
and the effects of postdepositional alteration. His two-volume
book Applied Clay Mineralogy (Elsevier Science, 2006, 2007) was
the capstone publication of his career and remains a valued
reference for researchers, exploration geologists, and mine
operators.
Dr. Haydn Murray was a kind, generous, and humble
person. He selflessly supported students, colleagues, and
friends by giving freely of his time, expertise, and friendship,
even as, throughout his active and successful professional life,
his family remained his principal focus. He and Juanita trav-
eled extensively during his career. He also enjoyed golfing,
family reunions, card games, reading, fishing, and hunting.
He is survived by Juanita; daughters Marilyn Elder (Andy)
of Zionsville, Indiana, and Lisa Rotskoff (Peter) of Springfield,
Illinois; grandchildren Samantha Murray, Reed Elder, Blake
Elder (Melissa), Case Elder, and Grant Rotskoff; and great-
grandchildren Haydn Murray, Zane Murray, Madison Elder,
and Shelby Murray. He was predeceased by his son Steven
Murray and grandson Mark Murray.


Irene Fertik-USC

GERALD NADLER
1924–2014
Elected in 1986
“For technical and educational leadership in industrial engineering,

interdisciplinary systems planning and design methodologies,
and for technological literacy programs for non-engineers.”
BY STAN SETTLES
GERALD NADLER, a long-term link to the founders of

industrial engineering, including Lillian Gilbreth, passed
away at home on July 28, 2014, at the age of 90.
Gerry, as he was generally called, was born in Cincinnati on
March 12, 1924, to Samuel and Minnie Nadler. He worked in
his father’s retail stores at a young age before earning his BS
degree in mechanical engineering in 1945, and MS and PhD
degrees in industrial engineering in 1946 and 1949, all from
Purdue University.
He began his professional career as a plant industrial
engineer at Central Wisconsin Canneries before moving
on to positions as vice president for general operations at
Artcraft Manufacturing, member of the board of directors for
Intertherm Co., and dozens of consulting assignments. He
was an instructor at Purdue, professor and department chair
at Washington University, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
and the University of Southern California (USC), and served
in five visiting professorships, four of them foreign.
In his 10 years (1983–1993) as chair of the Daniel J. Epstein
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in USC’s
Viterbi School of Engineering, he brought stability and stature
to the department that helped lead to its current status as one of
the premiere departments in the discipline. He was appointed
283

the university’s first IBM Chair in Engineering Management

and held that distinction until he retired. He also received
USC’s Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award and Phi Kappa
Phi Faculty Recognition.
Gerry served on three advisory boards in planning and
design methods and management, was president of the
Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers in 1989, and
received its highest distinction, the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth
Industrial Engineering Award. He chaired four national con-
ferences, delivered over 900 lectures and keynote addresses,
received over 25 national and international awards, and
authored 15 books and more than 225 articles. His book
Breakthrough Thinking: Why We Must Change the Way We Solve
Problems, and the Seven Principles to Achieve This (with coauthor
Shozo Hibino; Prima Publishing & Communications, 1989)
has been translated into ten languages and is cited regularly.
He was a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers,
Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences,
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and
American Society for Engineering Education; and member
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Engineering Management Society, Academy of Management,
Institute for High-Performance Planners, and World Future
Society.
At the local level Gerry jumped at the opportunity to apply
his breakthrough thinking approach. He served on the Los
Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission for
many years, into his 80s. He also served on the board of direc-
tors of the USC Credit Union and was the leading driver of the
credit union’s bold step of erecting its own building, which
is now a monument to Gerry’s systems engineering thinking
and tenacity. He had an exemplary ability to stick to his mis-
sion while working well with people with whom he disagreed
at the outset of a project.
He was elected to the NAE in 1986 and served on its
Advisory Committee on Technology and Society (1988–1991)
and subcommittee on Human Resources, Organizations,
and the Adoption of Workplace Technologies (1987–1991), as

GERALD NADLER 285
well as the NRC Naval Studies Board’s Committee on Shore

Installation Readiness and Management (1997–1998). He was
also deeply committed to his secondary Section 12 (Special
Fields & Interdisciplinary Engineering), representing his
broad interest in many areas of engineering.
It was clear to Gerry’s coworkers, students, and family
throughout his life that he loved his work both at home and at
USC. A strong contributor to his longevity was the combina-
tion of deep appreciation of technical and managerial concepts
and a very active physical life—he played singles tennis very
well and kept it up into his 70s. He also enjoyed season tickets
to the USC football games as well as theater and concert series
in Los Angeles. And he was very committed to his family.
Gerry is survived by his wife, Elaine Dubin Nadler, whom he
married on June 22, 1947; sons Robert and Burton and daughter
Janice Cutler; eight grandchildren; three great-grandchildren;
a great-great-grandson; and his brother Melvin.


F. R O B E RT N A K A
1923–2013
Elected in 1997
“For the development of national security systems and for

contributions in materials and sensor technologies
for advanced military systems.”
BY CURT H. DAVIS
FUMIO ROBERT NAKA, former deputy director of the

ational Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and a pioneer in
N
the development of stealth technology for concealing military
aircraft from enemy radar systems, passed away at the age of
90 on December 21, 2013, in Concord, Massachusetts.
Bob, as he was called by his family and friends, was born
July 18, 1923, in San Francisco to Kaizo and Shizue Kamegawa
Naka. He grew up in Los Angeles and lived most of his adult
life in Boston and Washington, DC.
Although his father wanted him to study law, Bob was
interested in engineering and enrolled in the University of
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) at age 16. His sophomore year
was interrupted, however, by World War II when he and his
family were imprisoned in 1942 at the Manzanar Relocation
Center for Japanese-American citizens. About this difficult
time in his life he said, “It was very depressing to be labeled
as a distrusted, unwanted American in the only country I ever
knew.”
After spending nine months in the military-style intern-
ment camp, Bob was released in 1943 through the efforts of
the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council
and the American Friends Service Committee so that he
could attend the University of Missouri in Columbia. There,
287

he recalled, “I was just another kid on campus. I made good

grades and was very popular. The experience made me whole
again, for which I have been very grateful to the American
Friends Service Committee.” He graduated with a bachelor’s
degree (1945) and went on to complete his master’s degree
(1947), both in electrical engineering, at the University of
Minnesota.
In 1951 he earned his doctorate in electron optics from
Harvard University and immediately accepted a position
with the Project Lincoln Presentation Group (later Lincoln
Laboratory) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He
led a very small group of engineers that invented the first
electronic circuit to detect analog radar signals for the Distant
Early Warning (DEW) line radars deployed across the Arctic
regions of North America. This circuit replaced the necessity
of human visual detection of approaching enemy aircraft on
radar scopes.
He also invented the radar concept of “cumulative prob-
ability of detection,” which he applied to the beam scan
sequence of large, fixed detection antennas for the Ballistic
Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) to warn of a possible
attack from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
And in October 1957 he was instrumental in designing the
Millstone Hill radar that tracked Sputnik, the world’s first arti-
ficial satellite. Engineers later employed this radar transmitter
design for BMEWS tracking radars at the Thule Air Force Base
in Greenland, Clear Air Force Station in Alaska, and Royal Air
Force station in Fylingdales, England.
Bob’s deep expertise in radar systems led to his selection in
1956 to work in secret on the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. His
pioneering contribution to that effort was the development of
classified methods to reduce the aircraft’s radar cross section
to help it evade detection by Russian radar systems. As one of
the leading pioneers of this new “stealth technology,” he was
later summoned to the top secret Project Oxcart, where he
worked on radar-absorbing materials applied to the Lockheed
A-12 reconnaissance aircraft, which ultimately became the
famous Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

F. ROBERT NAKA 289
In 1959 he accepted a position with the MITRE Corporation

to form a research laboratory. Eventually, he became techni-
cal director of MITRE’s Applied Science Laboratories, where
he was responsible for about a quarter of the company’s busi-
ness, overseeing departments for radar, communications, and
data processing, among others.
In 1968 the commanders of Air Force Systems Command
and Air Defense Command appointed Bob director of a highly
classified study to improve the surveillance of objects in space.
In one of the most comprehensive studies of its type ever per-
formed, Bob’s team compared the capabilities of projected
space-based assets with aircraft- and ground-based alterna-
tives and concluded that space-based systems were the most
cost-effective for early warning and space surveillance. The
group’s final report recommended a system that, after sev-
eral iterations, eventually became the Space-Based Infra-Red
System (SBIRS). SBIRS is used to this day to provide early
warning of the launch of ICBMs and other ground-based mis-
sile systems.
In 1969 the president of MITRE, John McLucas, became
under secretary of the Air Force and director of, at that time,
the top secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Bob
joined him with the public title of deputy under secretary
of the Air Force for Space Systems, but he actually served as
deputy director of the NRO.
During his three years there, Bob oversaw the launch of
several new national security space systems and chaired
many technical committees. As chair of the “Naka Panel,” he
worked to devise, and then implement, a successful strategy
that significantly improved overhead collection of foreign sig-
nals intelligence. He was widely recognized for his ability to
manage and encourage disparate NRO program offices to col-
laborate, but he considered the increase in the number of days
in orbit of national photoreconnaissance satellites his greatest
achievement at the NRO.
He then spent three years (1972–1975) as director of
detection and instrumentation systems at the Raytheon
Corporation, while also serving on the Air Force Studies Board

of the National Research Council. He was next appointed chief

scientist of the US Air Force and served in that position until
1978, when he became corporate vice president of the Science
Applications International Corporation (SAIC).
From 1978 to 1988 he also served as a director, consultant,
or member of a number of high-technology aerospace compa-
nies and defense groups—the Institute for Defense Analyses,
Simmonds Precision Products, Hercules Aerospace Corpora-
tion, GTE Government Systems Corporation, the Aerospace
Corporation, CAE Electronics, and CERA Incorporated,
where he was president and CEO through 2000. He was also
a member and vice chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory
Board (AFSAB) for 20-plus years between 1975 and 1998.
Over more than a half-century Bob was active on numer-
ous industrial, scientific, and government advisory boards,
including the NASA Space Program Advisory Council. In
the early 1990s he chaired an MIT summer study on space-
based radar that thoroughly examined use of satellite radar
to track aircraft, including stealth aircraft, and in 1996–1997
he chaired an AFSAB ad hoc committee that drafted a sig-
nificant report on Space Surveillance, Asteroids and Comets, and
Space Debris. He also served on the Global Positioning System
(GPS) Independent Review Team (IRT), whose charter called
for in-depth study of GPS-related issues and recommendation
of solutions to appropriate military officials.
Bob’s work was recognized with a variety of honors during
his lifetime. He was selected for the US Air Force Exceptional
Service award three times (1972, 1975, 1988), and in 2009 was
inducted into the Air Force Space Command’s Space and
Missile Pioneers. He received the University of Missouri’s
Honor Award for Engineering in 1971, its Faculty Alumni
Award in 1984, and an honorary doctor of science degree
in 2008.
The incredible story of Bob’s life and career—from
government-enforced incarceration in a Japanese-American
internment camp in World War II to stealth technology pio-
neer and deputy director of the NRO—is both sobering and
uplifting. At the outset of his adult life he was perceived as a

F. ROBERT NAKA 291
threat to his country, completely distrusted, and imprisoned

as a result. But through the kind efforts of some of his fellow
countrymen, he was given both a reprieve and an opportu-
nity. He seized that opportunity and, in a very short time, was
entrusted with his country’s greatest secrets during the height
of the Cold War. Through it all he demonstrated admirable
personal strength, perseverance, a high degree of intellect and
adaptability, and a willingness to work hard and collaborate
with others on matters of considerable importance to our
national security.
Reflecting on his mindset during those years, Bob described
his motivation: “What made me work for the government that
had deprived me and my family of civil liberties? The issue
was survival, not bitterness. America is the only country I had
and knew. I had to succeed.”
Bob was a wonderful human being, kind and generous, and
his personal sacrifice and service to his country should never
be forgotten.
He was preceded in death by his wife and college sweet-
heart, Patricia Neilon Naka (1923–2006), and is survived by
their four children—David (and Betsy; Baltimore), Holly
Walden (Farmington, CT), Michael (and Karen; Littleton, MA),
Peter (and Jean; Fairfax, VA)—and nine grandchildren: Alex,
Isabelle, Adalyn, Zhenya, Elizabeth, Jeremy, Matthew, Naomi,
and Marie.


G E R A L D T. O R L O B
1924–2013
Elected in 1992
“For fundamental contributions to the theory and practice of

hydraulic, environmental, and systems engineering applied
to water quality prediction and management.”
BY DANIEL P. LOUCKS AND WILLIAM W-G. YEH
GERALD THORVALD ORLOB, a pioneer in the field of

ater quality modeling and systems analysis in water and
w
environmental engineering, died peacefully in his sleep in
Poulsbo, Washington, at the age of 88 on March 23, 2013.
He was born July 4, 1924, to Axel and Margaret (Champlain)
Orlob in Seattle, where he graduated from Shoreline High
School and then served in the US Army during World
War II. After the war he obtained his BS and MS degrees at the
University of Washington and his PhD in hydraulic engineer-
ing from Stanford University in 1959. By this point, he already
had worked as an instructor at the University of California,
Berkeley, and as a survey supervisor for the Washington
Pollution Control Commission, for which he conducted some
of the first water quality monitoring surveys in Puget Sound.
He joined the civil and environmental engineering faculty
at the University of California, Davis in 1968 and remained,
as a professor and administrator, until his retirement in 1991.
As coordinator of UC Davis’ cooperative education program,
he established a water resources engineering program at the
Catholic University in Chile. He also served as a reserve offi-
cer in the Public Health Service.
Even early in his career, Orlob was recognized as a leader, and
soon became known as one of the world’s foremost authorities
293

in the development and application of hydrodynamic models

for water quality and ecosystem management. He earned his
reputation both as an academic and as the founder and head
of consulting firms Water Resources Engineers, Uniconsult
Inc., and Resource Management Associates.
His firms specialized in the development and application
of systems analyses and mathematical modeling to water
resource development and water quality control. He recruited
and mentored talented engineers and scientists who applied
innovative modeling technologies to the management of
pollutants in the San Francisco Bay system, the Santa Ana
groundwater basin in southern California, and throughout
the United States and world. A few notable examples include
modeling river-reservoir networks for the Tennessee Valley
Authority, Australia’s Sydney Harbor, Venetian lagoon, and
river basins in Poland and Romania, both of which were on
the other side of the Iron Curtain at that time.
Gerald Orlob was among the first to develop the ability to
simulate hydrologic, hydrodynamic, and water quality pro-
cesses as they exist naturally in rivers, lakes, reservoirs, estu-
aries, and coastal systems, and to examine how they may be
affected by human intervention. These simulation models
were used to improve the management of limited or threat-
ened water resources and to inform decision making on issues
related to public health and the viability of threatened or
endangered aquatic species.
The tools he developed helped to quantify consequences of
alternative physical works for water storage and supply, flood
control and pollution control, and effects of various manage-
ment strategies. He showed how computer models that accu-
rately simulate the behaviors of natural and managed systems
could be used to study and address such issues.
He received numerous honors for his contributions to the
civil and environmental engineering profession. In addition to
his election to the NAE, he was a diplomate of the American
Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists and a dis-
tinguished member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
He was awarded a Fulbright-Hayes Lectureship, and ASCE’s

GERALD T. ORLOB 295
Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Prize, Rudolph Hering Medal,

and Julian Hinds Award.
He is well known in part because of his many publica-
tions—he began publishing even before obtaining his PhD.
Among the most influential is Mathematical Modeling of Water
Quality: Streams, Lakes, and Reservoirs (Wiley-Interscience and
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 1983).
But Jerry, as he was called, is also well known because of
his ability to inspire people to work together on important
environmental problems and his sincere respect for, and sup-
port of, his colleagues and students. Many of us developed
our own reputations in part because of what Jerry taught us
or the opportunities he provided throughout our careers. His
enthusiasm and joy in our work was infectious. He encour-
aged all of us to do our best and provided the guidance and
mentoring to help us do so. His students’ high expectations
of t hemselves—and the resulting achievements—were due in
large part to his confidence in their abilities. “Jerry’s kids,” as
they are called, have gone on to positively influence the profes-
sion through their work as professors, consulting engineers, or
service in public agencies. And for those of us who were not
his students, Jerry was a teacher’s teacher.
Jerry’s passion was for his teaching and research, and in
2002 he and his wife demonstrated their commitment to both
by endowing the Gerald T. and Lillian P. Orlob Professorship
in Water Resources Engineering, which annually recognizes
UC Davis faculty members who are acknowledged leaders in
water resources engineering.
He and Lillian enjoyed entertaining guests in the home
he designed and built among the vineyards in Green Valley,
California. They also traveled extensively throughout the
world together, collecting works of art to display in their home.
After his retirement, Jerry maintained an active research
program as professor emeritus until 2003, when he moved to
Washington, where he designed his second new home and
explored his artistic talents with a renewed interest in sketch-
ing. He also enjoyed backpacking and hiking in the mountains
and fly fishing in various rivers.

Lillian passed away in 2002 after 26 years of marriage.

Jerry had derived much of his energy from his marriage to
Lillian. After her death he maintained contact with many of
his former students, while devoting his time to his children—
Kenneth W. Orlob, Kathleen M. Corley, Colette M. Markham,
Curtis A. Orlob, and Mark G. Orlob—and grand- and
great-grandchildren.



Y I H - H S I N G PA O
1930–2013
Elected in 1985
“For contributions of basic significance and for stimulating innovative

applications in the field of wave propagation in elastic solids.”
BY FRANCIS C. MOON, KOLUMBAN HUTTER,

AND WOLFGANG SACHSE
YIH-HSING PAO, a mechanical engineer whose research

i nterest was in the dynamics of solid materials, especially wave
propagation and ultrasonics, died June 18, 2013, at age 83.
He was born January 19, 1930, in Nanking, China. He
studied first at National Chiao Tung University in Shanghai for
two years and, after the Chinese Civil War, finished his studies
at National Taiwan University in Taipei in 1952 with a BS in
civil engineering. He came to the United States and obtained
an MS degree in engineering mechanics from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, and went on to Columbia University
where he received his PhD in wave propagation in solids in
1959. At Columbia he was exposed to fundamental applied
physics, rather than just elements of structural engineer-
ing, and with his advisor, Raymond Mindlin, wrote his first
paper, “Dispersion of Flexural Waves in an Elastic, Circular
Cylinder,” a classical subject of applied dynamics.
When he came to Cornell in 1958 as an assistant profes-
sor in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
(T&AM, now merged with the Sibley School of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering) he invited colleagues to call him
“Pao.” Friendly and outgoing, he soon attracted research stu-
dents who went on to teach at many of the top universities in
the United States and abroad.
299

In anticipation of applications to the then new technolo-

gies of magnetic transportation and magnetic fusion, begin-
ning in 1964 Pao, with several graduate students, expanded
his research into the mechanics of elastic structures in mag-
netic fields. Their discoveries in tuning natural frequencies
of structures with static magnetic fields were rediscovered
decades later in the application of static electric fields to tune
microsensors, called MEMS, which are used today in many
consumer products.
In 1974 he became chair of T&AM and strove with great
vigor to move applied mechanics at Cornell into the top ranks.
He hired and supported faculty who established nation-
ally recognized laboratories in ultrasonic wave propagation,
magneto-mechanics, nonlinear dynamics, constitutive behav-
ior of materials, and fracture mechanics. He upgraded the
experimental teaching laboratories in applied mechanics. He
believed in the importance of defining experiments coupled
with thorough mathematical analysis and strongly supported
the teaching of engineering mathematics by engineering fac-
ulty. And he moved his department into the realm of nonlinear
dynamics in the late 1970s by aggressively moving to hire a
new professor who eventually led a nationally recognized
team in chaos theory at the university. In 1982 he succeeded in
bringing the 9th US Congress of Applied Mechanics, with over
600 participants, to Cornell.
In 1980, however, his rising career was dealt a blow with the
diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease that eventu-
ally left him without sight. Nonetheless in the 1980s he spear-
headed a major research project with Larry Payne and several
others on the subject of inverse problems in wave propagation
with applications to nondestructive testing.
In 1984 he was invited to Taiwan to plan the building of
a new Institute of Applied Mechanics at the National Taiwan
University (NTU). In 1989–1994 he was director of this new
research institute that is now a leader in engineering mechanics
education in Asia.
In 1998 he retired from NTU and in 2000 became profes-
sor emeritus at Cornell. He finished his career in China as a

YIH-HSING PAO 301
professor at Zhejiang University. In his later years he was a

senior statesman of applied mechanics, working to build
bridges between researchers in Taiwan and mainland Chinese
universities.
Pao’s main research interest was the dynamics of solid
materials, especially wave propagation, ultrasonics, non
destructive testing, and the mechanics of structures in electro-
magnetic fields. His multidisciplinary research on waves in
trusses and frames, begun in the late 1990s, might be called
“waves in complex continuous systems.” He and his students
took the classical problem of steady vibration of trusses and
frames and addressed the difficult analysis of wave propaga-
tion in the transient regime.
During his career he was a consultant to the Rand
Corporation and collaborated with C-C Mow. He was also a
visiting professor at Princeton and Stanford, the Technische
Hochschule Darmstadt, and Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology. He served on the US National Committee
on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (1980–1984) and the
NRC Panel for Manufacturing Engineering (1980–1983). And
from 1992 to 1995 he was president of the Chinese Society of
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Taipei.
Yih-Hsing Pao was the author or coauthor of more than
100 papers in different fields, published in internationally
renowned journals, and he was invited to publish a number of
comprehensive review articles. His pioneering 1973 monograph
Diffraction of Elastic Waves and Dynamic Stress Concentrations
(coauthored with Mow; Crane, Russak & Co.) extended the
ideas of static stress concentrations in solid elastic materials
into the dynamic regime. His 1977 article “Generalized Ray
Theory and Transient Responses of Layered Elastic Solids”
was selected by the International Union of Theoretical and
Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) as one of the landmark papers
in mechanics of the 20th century (see Mechanics at the Turn of
the Century, W. Schielen and L. van Wijngarden, eds.; Shaker
Verlag GmbH, 2000).
In 2010 his former students and colleagues organized a trib-
ute to him in Taipei. A list of his research papers as well as

the invited papers at the conference were published under the

title From Waves in Complex Systems to Dynamics of Generalized
Continua (ed. K. Hutter, T-T Wu, and Y-C Shu; World Scientific,
2011).
Pao’s leadership was recognized with his elections to the
National Academy of Engineering in 1985 and the Academia
Sinica (Taipei) in 1986. He also received the Humboldt
Foundation’s Senior Scientist Award, and an honorary doctor-
ate from National Chiao Tung University (Hsinchu City).
That Pao kept up his spirit and very active intellectual
engagement in the face of his eye disease is absolutely amaz-
ing and deserves our highest respect and admiration. He not
only followed research at the cutting edge but also inspired
and took part in research. Even when he was completely blind
he presented at conferences with a well-organized lecture,
guiding the audience through densely filled transparencies
prepared by one of his aides.
At Cornell Pao was known as a strong personality who
often expressed his views forcefully and always with a view
toward the future. But during T&AM’s weekly lunches at
Johnny’s Big Red Grill in Collegetown, he would often lead
a discussion about where mechanics research was going or
what role mechanics should play in teaching in the College of
Engineering.
He was a hands-on advisor to his graduate students,
always making suggestions and “red-lining” their research
writing and dissertations with extensive notes. While he often
proffered advice to his students, he was patient and open to
their own ideas, especially when they wished to move in new
directions.
Yih-Hsing Pao is survived by his wife, Amelia Pao, now
living in Taipei; their children Winston, May, and Sophie; and
his brother, Yih-Ho Pao (NAE 2000). The Pao brothers are one
of very few brother pairs elected to the National Academy of
Engineering.



E U G E N E J . P E LT I E R
1910–2004
Elected in 1979
“Pioneering and contributions in the development of

engineering and management activities.”
BY THE NAVAL FACILITIES ENGINEERING COMMAND STAFF

EUGENE JOSEPH PELTIER, retired rear admiral, chief of

civil engineers, and former chief executive officer of Sverdrup
& Parcel and Associates in St. Louis, died February 13, 2004,
at the age of 93.
Eugene was born March 28, 1910, and raised in Concordia,
Kansas, the son of Frederick and Emma (Falardeau) Peltier. He
attended Kanas State University (KSU), where he met Lena
Evelyn Gennette; they married June 28, 1932. He graduated
with honors the following year with a bachelor’s degree in civil
engineering and went on to earn his master’s degree in 1934.
From 1934 to 1940 he was a resident engineer with the
Kansas Highway Commission. Commissioned a lieutenant
(jg) in the US Naval Reserve on April 30, 1936, he transferred
to the Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps in the rank of commander
in 1946 and subsequently advanced to rear admiral from 1957
until he retired in 1962.
Reporting for active duty in July 1940, he served until July
1942 as assistant public works officer at the Naval Training
Station in Great Lakes, Illinois, before a transfer to Boston, where
he was senior assistant to the superintending civil engineer,
Area I, until November 1944. After three months of instruction
at the Naval Construction Battalion Center (Davisville, Rhode
Island) he was assigned in early 1945 commanding officer
305

of the 137th Naval Construction Battalion, which landed on

Okinawa. At the war’s end in September 1945, he formed
and became officer in charge of the 54th Naval Construction
Regiment on Okinawa.
Returning to the United States in December 1945, he
reported as public works officer on the staff of the Commander
Naval Technical Training Command, Pensacola and Memphis.
He remained in that assignment for three years before serving
as public works officer of the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville
(1949–1951). During that period he had additional duty on the
staff of Commander Naval Air Bases, Sixth Naval District.
In May 1951 he was ordered to the Fourteenth Naval District,
Pearl Harbor, where for two years he was district public works
officer and officer in charge of construction for the Naval Base.
He served briefly as executive assistant to the assistant chief
for operations at the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks in
Washington, DC (July–December 1953) and then as assistant
chief for maintenance and material until February 1956, when
he was ordered to duty as commanding officer of the Naval
Construction Battalion Center (Port Hueneme, California). In
1957 he was appointed chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks
and of Civil Engineers of the US Navy, serving as such until
his retirement in February 1962.
He entered the private sector as vice president of the engi-
neering firm of Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates, where he
rose to become senior vice president (1964), executive vice pres-
ident (1966), and president (1967). He also served as president
and director of Sverdrup & Parcel International, Inc. and was
president and director of Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates of
New York. In addition, he was vice president and director of
ARO, Inc., and director of Aronetics, Inc., both of Tullahoma,
Tennessee, and a director of the Granite City Steel Company
in Illinois.
Among his honors, Rear Admiral Peltier was awarded the
Legion of Merit “For exceptionally meritorious conduct . . .
from December 1957 to January 1962 as Chief, Bureau of Yards
and Docks.” The citation continues in part:

EUGENE J. PELTIER 307
Exercising keen foresight and outstanding professional knowl-

edge and ability, Rear Admiral Peltier has set new objectives
to adjust to the rapidly advancing technological revolution in
the Navy and to provide the best possible engineering support
to the Operating Forces and the Shore Establishment. Under
his skillful guidance, the implementation of engineered man-
agement programs and the revision of guideline specifications,
definitive drawings and design manuals have produced tan-
gible savings of considerable magnitude to the Government
of the United States. In addition, the Navy’s Public Works
Maintenance Program has established an enviable reputation
in Industry in the application of the principles of engineered
management to the complex problems of maintenance. In the
field of Military Construction, he has incorporated the very
latest design and construction techniques known to the indus-
try, resulting in new construction at costs below previous levels.
His dynamic and effective leadership in implementing stream-
lined procedures has resulted in more rapid p lanning, design
and construction to meet the critical demands of m odern-day
weaponry. . . .
He also received the Naval Reserve Medal, American

Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-
Pacific Campaign Medal with one engagement star, World
War II Victory Medal, Navy Occupation Service Medal, and
the National Defense Service Medal.
He received recognition in the civil sector as well: the
Award of Merit from the Top Ten Public Works Man of the
Year Award (1960) and Consulting Engineers Council (1962),
Special Citation Award from the American Institute of Steel
Construction (1973), and Engineer of the Year from the
Missouri Society of Professional Engineers (1974). KSU recog-
nized him with an honorary doctor of law degree in 1961 and
its Distinguished Alumni Award in 1975, and he was a charter
member of KSU’s Engineering Hall of Fame.
A licensed professional engineer in 13 states, Rear Admiral
Peltier was active in numerous professional organizations.
He was a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers
and a member of the American Concrete Institute, American

Institute of Consulting Engineers, Society of American

Military Engineers (president, 1962), Missouri and National
Societies of Professional Engineers, Permanent International
Association of Navigation Congresses, American Public
Works Association, Highway Research Board, American
Management Association, Consulting Engineers Council,
and International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association.
He was also a director of the American Road Builders
Association, senior vice president, and president of the
Engineering Division.
After 56 years of marriage, Lena died in August 1988. A son,
Eugene J. Jr., also died earlier. At the time of Eugene’s death,
he was survived by daughters Marion Springer (Lawrence,
KS), Carole Coulter (Overland Park), and Anne Peltier
(Albany, Oregon); son Kenneth N. (Brussels); sisters Theresa
Port (Phoenix) and Margaret Kelly (Pasadena, California); 13
grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren.


This picture was taken just after he received the Guggenheim Medal
at the Stanford University Faculty Club, on December 2, 2004. He is
surrounded by family. Left to right: Lynette Perkins—daughter-in-
law, James Lomax—son-in-law, Tracy Perkins—granddaughter, Bill
Perkins—son, Anne Perkins—daughter.

C O U RT L A N D D . P E R K I N S
1912–2008
Elected in 1969
“Leadership in the fields of airplane stability and

control and airplane dynamics.”
BY IRVIN GLASSMAN, SAU-HAI (HARVEY) LAM,

ROBERT G. JAHN, AND ROBERT M. WHITE
C OURTLAND DAVIS PERKINS, professor emeritus in the

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at
Princeton University, died January 6, 2008, at the age of 95.
With his passing the department, the entire university, and the
world of aerospace technology lost one of their most gifted
and effective scholars and institutional leaders.
No memorial resolution can satisfactorily encompass the
depth and breadth of this fine man’s gigantic impact on the evo-
lution of the aeronautical engineering profession and its prac-
tices. Nor can it adequately highlight his dominant role in the
development of that portion of the Princeton University School
of Engineering and Applied Science that now comprises a full
panorama of undergraduate and graduate education, basic
research, and pragmatic applications in the contemporary
aerospace sciences. Nonetheless, we should endeavor to recall
a few vignettes of his remarkable performances on several
institutional stages.
A native of Philadelphia (born December 27, 1912), Court
received his undergraduate education at Swarthmore College,
graduating in 1935, supplemented by a master’s degree from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1941. As World
War II enveloped our country, he positioned himself in the
Flight Technology Unit of the US Army’s Wright-Patterson
311

Stability and Control Center, and by the war’s end was already
a recognized authority on the fundamentals of that portion of
the burgeoning science of aeronautics.
With the portfolio of basic understanding and pragmatic
insights thus acquired, in 1945 he was appointed by the
founding chair, Daniel Sayre, to join Princeton’s fledgling
Aeronautical Engineering Department, and so distinguished
himself in his scholarly work and administrative savoir faire
that he succeeded Sayre as chair in 1951. Somewhere in that
brief period he also found time to coauthor (with Robert
Hage) and publish the seminal textbook Airplane Performance,
Stability and Control (John Wiley, 1949), which immediately
became the standard text in the field and remains widely used
and celebrated to this day.
The ensuing 27 years of his inspiring departmental oversight
began with the construction and use of a variety of experimen-
tal facilities on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus that were rarely
found at other academic institutions—an assortment of wind
tunnels, rocket test stands, towing tracks, chemical and electri-
cal propulsion research laboratories, and, most remarkably, a
fully operational airfield, hangar, and flight research labora-
tory with a number of test aircraft available not only for under-
graduate flight instruction and experience but also for faculty
and graduate student research projects.
Himself an avid pilot, Court was famous for rigging control
surfaces and instrumentation devices on some of the test air-
craft in the Forrestal hangar to obtain ad hoc flight data that
were inaccessible by more conventional means. His master-
ful history, “Development of Airplane Stability and Control
Technology,” presented in his 1969 von Kármán Lecture,
doubtless benefited from these Princeton facilities and his per-
sonal experiments, as well as his having in some way been
involved in every major commercial and military aircraft
development program up to that time.
The early portion of this epoch was also marked by
the appointment of an outstanding cadre of internation-
ally renowned faculty of the stature of Luigi Crocco, Martin
Summerfield, Lester Lees, Wallace Hayes, and Seymour

COURTLAND D. PERKINS 313
Bogdonoff, among many others who, along with the afore-

mentioned research facilities, in turn attracted a succes-
sion of brilliant students destined to become leaders in the
aerospace industry. Graduates James and John McDonnell,
Norman Augustine, Philip Condit, and Renso Caporali all
eventually ascended to become chief executive officer or
chair of McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, and
Grumman aerospace firms. A similarly impressive list of
graduates left Princeton to lead academic departments here
and abroad or to populate major government or philanthropic
directorates, and a succession of astronauts have further dis-
tinguished this Princeton family.
With reference to Court’s own public leadership roles,
this space allows little more than passing acknowledgment
of the constellation of government, commercial, and agency
positions he held over his incredibly productive career: chief
scientist of the US Air Force as well as assistant secretary for
research and development, chief engineer for the US Army,
chair of the NATO Advisory Group for Aeronautical Research
and Development, and president of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics, among many others. At the
close of his departmental chairmanship, Court agreed to serve
one year as associate dean of the school, to help with its ongo-
ing development efforts.
In 1975 Dr. Perkins took early retirement from Princeton,
becoming professor emeritus, when he was elected president
of the National Academy of Engineering, a position in which
he served two terms. He was chosen because of his manage-
rial skills and his ability to deal comfortably with the multiple
constituencies of the members—academia, business, and gov-
ernment. Upon his election, he also became vice chair of the
National Research Council and chair of the NRC’s Assembly
of Engineering.
As NAE president he had three goals: to increase the number
of members, improve the financial resources, and promote the
NAE’s visibility and thereby enhance its public recognition.
During his presidency, the NAE elected the first foreign asso-
ciates [now called foreign members] and doubled the size of

its membership by expanding the criteria for membership.

Upon completion of his term, the NAE had an endowment of
$5.2 million, making it a viable financial institution.
To improve the public’s understanding of engineering
Dr. Perkins funded roundtables, or quick-turnaround studies,
that addressed technological topics such as competitiveness
in the civil aviation industry, guidelines for reauthorization
of the Clean Water Act, and recommendations for improving
engineering education. Topics for the symposium held during
the annual meeting addressed engineering issues such as the
outlook for nuclear power (1979) and genetic engineering
(1981) and the long-term effect of technology on e mployment/
unemployment (1983). And a 1978 report, Technology, Trade, and
the US Economy, by an NRC committee with NAE oversight
addressed US industrial competitiveness in a global market.
In recognition of his lifetime of service to Princeton and to
his professional world, the university awarded him an hon-
orary doctorate in 2001, the first ever presented to a member
of its engineering faculty. And in 2004 he received the Daniel
Guggenheim Medal, widely recognized as the highest honor
in aviation.
In closing this less-than-adequate professional review, we
feel most compelled to testify to the incomparable charm, affa-
bility, and humble confidence with which Court pursued and
dispatched his panoply of responsibilities. No student, faculty
member, staff person, or outside professional colleague ever
entered Court’s Princeton office to present a report, a prob-
lem, an idea, or any other need, however complex, egregious,
or preposterous it might appear, that was not greeted with a
hearty smile, a personal anecdote or two, a touch of urbane
wisdom, and a reliable promise for responsible action. And
this sunny and positive disposition so permeated the entire
establishment over which he presided, that learning and
teaching and creating in his department became fun, and it
was a very happy place to be and to flourish.
There is no doubt that his personal radiance not only
enhanced his own credibility and effectiveness but also

COURTLAND D. PERKINS 315
enabled and inspired many others to propagate their own tal-

ents and interests much more productively.
Ave et vale, dear Court. We shall miss you immensely, but
your memory is secure.


E G O R P. P O P O V
1913–2001
Elected in 1976
“Contributions in mechanics of solids and the inelastic

cyclic behavior of structural systems.”
BY ROBIN K. McGUIRE
EGOR PAUL POPOV passed away on April 19, 2001, in

Berkeley, California, at age 88. He was born February 6, 1913,
in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire. He and his family
escaped to Manchuria in 1921 during the Bolshevik Revolu-
tion, and from there went to Shanghai before emigrating to the
United States in 1927.
His family settled in San Francisco, and in 1929 Popov entered
the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied civil
engineering and graduated with honors in 1933. He received a
scholarship for graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and obtained his MS degree in civil engineering
in 1934. He was then awarded a scholarship to the California
Institute of Technology and moved to Pasadena to pursue his
doctoral degree.
He studied under Theodore von Kármán and taught courses
as a graduate student from 1935 to 1937. He was advised,
however, that his approach to engineering was more math-
ematical than practical and that he would be better suited to
study under Stephen Timoshenko at Stanford University. He
left Caltech and worked for eight years in southern California,
doing structural analysis and design for numerous public
and private concerns. This work experience qualified him for
registration in California as a mechanical engineer and a civil
317

engineer with structural authority as well as a general contrac-

tor. Using the latter credentials, he constructed his own house
in San Gabriel.
In 1945 he contacted Timoshenko and explained that he
wanted to pursue a dissertation in civil engineering. The
Stanford faculty accepted his graduate course work at MIT
and Caltech as sufficient, and Popov immediately began work
on his dissertation under Timoshenko. He received his PhD
degree in civil engineering and applied mechanics in the
summer of 1946 and was offered and accepted a position as
assistant professor at UC Berkeley.
Popov was instrumental in establishing a PhD program
in civil engineering at Berkeley. Mihran Agbabian was the
first PhD graduate in civil (structural) engineering in 1951
and founded his own consulting engineering company and
become chair of civil engineering at the University of Southern
California. Popov was promoted to professor in 1953 and men-
tored 34 PhD students during his tenure at UC Berkeley.
In his early efforts developing engineering course material,
Popov perceived that available textbooks were not sufficient in
engineering mechanics, so he wrote and published Mechanics
of Materials (Prentice Hall) in 1952. It was adopted as an engi-
neering textbook at many universities in the United States and
was translated into several languages for use in foreign engi-
neering programs. A second edition was published in 1976.
Burgeoning interest in structural mechanics education
prompted the Civil Engineering Department at UC Berkeley
to create a new division in 1958 for structural engineering and
structural mechanics, of which Popov was the first chair. He
was also the director of the Structural Engineering Laboratories
in the Civil Engineering Department, indicating his interest in
evaluating theoretical results using test structures.
He developed theoretical methods to predict the behav-
ior of shell structures, particularly for buckling failures, and
these methods led to advances in the design and construc-
tion of water storage tanks and airplane hangars. He became
active in the International Association for Shell Structures and
organized and chaired the 1962 World Conference on Shell

EGOR P. POPOV 319
Structures in San Francisco, attended by more than a thousand

engineers from around the world.
His work on shell buckling prompted the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration to ask him to resolve
buckling problems related to its large (120 ft tall, 60 ft diameter)
vacuum chamber in Houston in the 1960s. The chamber was
designed to mimic conditions expected during a moon land-
ing and to test equipment that would be used in that effort.
At the time, finite element solutions were not available for
three-dimensional curved structures, but Popov achieved a
solution using a finite element analysis for a flat surface with
ribs and calculating the equivalent forces for a curved surface
with ribs. NASA implemented the solution and the vacuum
chamber performed as required.
In 1968 he published a second book, Introduction to Mechanics
of Solids (Prentice Hall). He also published numerous technical
papers on nonlinear mechanics and constitutive properties.
Among these were “Constitutive Relations for Generalized
Materials” and “Cyclic Metal Plasticity: Experiments and
Theory,” both coauthored with PhD student Hans Petersson
in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics, in 1977 and 1978
respectively.
Popov continued applied research on nonlinear response
of structures, initially studying the cyclic, nonlinear behavior
of reinforced concrete structural members and systems, and
then steel structural members and systems. For the latter he
conducted experiments and analyzed the connections of steel
beams and columns, both welded and bolted. He also devel-
oped methods to use friction devices to retrofit existing struc-
tures, thereby increasing their seismic safety. His methods to
avoid structural failures were adopted in the design of the
Alaska pipeline and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
The American Iron and Steel Institute supported much of his
research and published his results in its Bulletins.
Popov was one of the few faculty members at UC Berkeley
who was a registered structural engineer in California (in
addition to being a registered civil engineer and mechani-
cal engineer). His relationships with other practicing

engineers—among them Navin Amin, Henry Degenkolb,

Nick Forell, Ron Hamburger, Clarkson Pinkham, and Mark
Saunders—led to his election as president of the Structural
Engineers Association of Northern California (1983–1984).
Through these contacts, Popov developed an interest in
analyzing and testing eccentrically braced frames (EBFs) and
applied that knowledge to evaluate and improve the seismic
design of numerous structures. He recognized that EBFs had
been used for many years in structures to provide lateral resis-
tance to wind loads, but those applications required the braces
to perform elastically. The use of EBFs to resist lateral loads
from earthquake shaking was first investigated by Popov and
Charles Roeder, one of his PhD students, in the 1970s. They
recognized that EBFs had an advantage over other methods
of lateral-load resistance by both absorbing energy through
inelastic response and reducing nonstructural damage by lim-
iting interstory displacements.
Popov’s interactions with practical engineers revealed sev-
eral important lessons for his research. One was that testing
specimens using numerous low-strain nonlinear tests did not
give good predictability of structural behavior during large-
strain, limited cycle motions. Another was that large-scale, not
just small-scale, specimens needed to be tested in the labora-
tory. A third was that steel beam-column assemblages need to
be joined with full-penetration welds. These lessons provided
insights into how real structures perform when subjected to
high loading conditions inducing large strains, conditions that
were not well understood.
Testing EBFs at UC Berkeley was limited by the size of test-
ing equipment to one-third scale frames. Popov participated
in a joint US-Japan research effort, with US funding from the
National Science Foundation, in which full-scale testing was
conducted at a test laboratory in the Japanese city of Tsukuba.
There, a full-scale EBF connection was constructed where the
brace was attached to the beam using a welded T-connector.
Popov predicted that the web of the T-connector would fail
under compression and thus would be the weak link in the
EBF. This failure mode was confirmed by full-scale testing at

EGOR P. POPOV 321
the Tsukuba test facility, leading to changes in the seismic pro-

visions of building codes for EBF steel structures.
Popov retired from UC Berkeley in 1983 and was subse-
quently recognized with the title Professor of the Graduate
School, which allowed him to continue research with fund-
ing from the university. He studied methods to improve the
behavior of steel and reinforced concrete structures during
earthquakes, using improved design of both structural connec-
tions (by welding and high-strength bolts for steel structures,
and details of steel reinforcing for concrete structures) and
structural bracing. He published his third book, Engineering
Mechanics of Solids, in 1990, with a 2nd edition in 1999 (both
published by Prentice Hall).
Popov’s students and colleagues recall his dedication and
passion for teaching.1 In 1977 he received UC Berkeley’s
Distinguished Teaching Award, presented to “individual fac-
ulty for sustained performance of excellence in teaching . . .
[that] incites intellectual curiosity in students, inspires depart-
mental colleagues, and makes students aware of significant
relationships between the academy and the world at large.”
That same year his colleagues organized a symposium on
structural engineering and structural mechanics, supported
by the NSF, to honor his 30 years of teaching at UC Berkeley.
And in 1983 he was awarded the Berkeley Citation, which rec-
ognizes individuals “whose attainments significantly exceed
the standards of excellence in their fields and whose contribu-
tions to UC Berkeley are manifestly above and beyond the call
of duty.”
For his many contributions to the field of structural engi-
neering, Popov was elected to the National Academy of
Engineering in 1976 and received many awards for his research,
including the American Society of Civil Engineering’s Nathan
N. Newmark Medal (1981) and Norman Medal (1987), and
the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s George W.
1
The author became acquainted with Prof. Popov in 1968–1969 while
a graduate student in the SESM Department at UC Berkeley, and was
impressed with his friendly, caring approach toward all graduate stu-
dents, even those not studying under him.

Housner Medal (its highest honor) in 1999. In 2006 the Applied

Technology Council posthumously recognized him as Top
Seismic Engineer of the 20th Century.
All who knew Egor Popov remarked on his strong marriage
with Irene, whom he met in Los Angeles and married in 1939.
Irene provided personal support as well as secretarial services
for Egor, typing his manuscripts for books and papers. This
was no small effort, in the days when typing was done with a
manual typewriter and she had to insert Popov’s many (hand-
written) equations. Egor and Irene Popov raised two success-
ful children, Kathy and Alex.
Irene passed away in 1994. Popov was survived by a
brother, Nicholas Popov of Santa Rosa, California (recently
deceased); daughter Katherine Crabtree of Medford,
Oregon; son Alexander Popov of Anna, Illinois; six grand-
children; and eleven great-grandchildren (there are now 16
great-grandchildren).


Jonas Portrait Photography, Pittsburgh, PA

WILLIAM N. POUNDSTONE
1925–2015
Elected in 1977
“Contributions to the development of improved

underground coal mining technology.”
BY STAN SUBOLESKI
W ILLIAM NICHOLAS POUNDSTONE, an unparalleled

innovator in coal mining and former executive vice president
of Consolidation Coal (now Consol Energy), died July 3, 2015,
at the age of 89, in Jupiter Island, Florida.
Bill was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, on August 12,
1925, the son of J. Stanley and Lena Grace Poundstone. His
father was a Mining Extension Service instructor for West
Virginia University (WVU), traveling to mines across the state
and teaching courses such as mining methods, ventilation,
and safety to supervisors and miners.
Service as a tech sergeant during World War II meant that
Bill did not receive his engineer of mines BS degree from WVU
until 1949. His graduating class of miners, most of which
were fellow veterans, would prove to be among the most
distinguished group in the history of the program—and Bill
was at the top of the class. In recognition of his standing, the
industry’s Old Timers Club, a group of leading executives,
presented him with its inaugural award. Bill later became the
club’s president.
In the summers during his college years, Bill worked for
Christopher Coal Company, a subsidiary of Consol, as a
timberman and trackman—physically demanding jobs during
those early days of mine mechanization. Upon graduation, he
325

elected to work for Christopher and was initially assigned to

a laborer job at one of the company’s four mines. He quickly
rose to become construction foreman and belt foreman, then
preparation engineer for the processing plant.
In 1952 he became production engineer for all of Christopher
and accepted the assignment of mechanizing the mining opera-
tions by introducing continuous mining and continuous haul-
age. He extensively modified a new design of continuous
miner—the boring-machine miner—and obtained several of his
eventual total of 34 patents for improvements in mining equip-
ment and the mining process.
He also developed and received a patent for the extensible
belt, a continuous haulage unit that, together with the con-
tinuous miner, constituted a new mining system. This system
became the mainstay of production for the thicker, Pittsburgh-
seam mines for years to come, essentially until the introduc-
tion of longwall mining—which Bill also altered decades later.
In a talk aimed at young engineers, Bill said that his career
had been driven by a firm belief that there was an opportu-
nity for improvement in the science of coal mining. He noted
that the industry was able to keep coal prices steady at $5 per
ton for the next 20+ years thanks to a series of engineering
innovations.
Bill next took on the job of developing and then running
the new Humphrey Mine, at the time the largest mine in West
Virginia. He was promoted to general superintendent, in
charge of production at all of Christopher’s mines, and in 1961
moved into Consol’s corporate structure as assistant to the
vice president of operations. Consol was then the country’s
largest coal mining company and all engineering fell under
the direction of the VP-Operations.
In 1965, in an event seldom witnessed in corporations, the
VP-Operations began reporting to Bill when Bill was pro-
moted to executive vice president of Consolidation Coal and
a member of its board of directors, positions that he held until
his retirement in 1982. The rumor that circulated through the
corporate offices was that Bill’s former boss was offered the
job and replied that he was content in his current job but knew

WILLIAM N. POUNDSTONE 327
the perfect person for the position: Bill. True or not, Bill proved
to be the perfect person to lead the company through a period
of rapid introduction of innovative technology. In his new
position, Bill headed all of the company’s service functions,
including engineering, exploration, land, environmental ser-
vices, long-range planning, mining research, and the design
and construction of all new mining facilities.
In addition to the extensible belt and modifications to the
boring-machine type miner, Bill either personally developed
or led the development, design, and/or adoption of the rope-
belt conveyor, belt-conveyor rigid-bracket idlers in under-
ground mining, self-training belt idlers, bulk rock dusting, the
pressure-vessel bulk rock duster, and many other innovations
for which he received patents. He led a safety-inspired, multi
year effort to replace belt conveyors in underground mines
with coarse-coal hydraulic haulage, developing and employ-
ing a prototype unit that operated for a number of years but
ultimately did not succeed economically. He led the introduc-
tion of longwall mining at Consol, while developing inno-
vations such as a testing protocol that forced manufacturers
to make improvements in the machinery and system. These
innovations dramatically improved safety and productivity at
Consol and, ultimately, in the industry.
He also led and oversaw the company’s degasification
efforts, leading to the early application of intelligent direc-
tional drilling to coalbed methane drainage and, soon after,
the formation of Consol’s commercial gas company. He orga-
nized the company’s Central Engineering group that would
take over the development of Consol’s major projects, includ-
ing the ground-breaking (pun intended) developments in
longwall mining.
Bill received many honors during his career, among them
the Erskine Ramsay Award (1981) and Howard N. Eavenson
Award (1984) from the American Institute of Mining,
Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME), the Percy
Nicholls Award (1979) of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME)-AIME, the William Metcalf Award (1984)
of the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania (ESWP),

and the Distinguished Service Award from the National Coal

Association. He was a distinguished member of the Society
for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME) and an honor-
ary member of the AIME. In 1981 he was awarded an hon-
orary doctor of science degree from West Virginia University.
He was inducted into the West Virginia Coal Miners Hall of
Fame and posthumously elected to the National Mining Hall
of Fame.
He served as an officer or director of numerous associa-
tions, including director of the Bituminous Coal Operators’
Association, Western Pennsylvania Coal Operators’ Association,
and ESWP; president of the Coal Mining Institute of America,
King Coal Club, and Old Timers Club; and chair of Bituminous
Coal Research, Inc.
Bill remained active outside the coal industry both pre- and
postretirement. He served on numerous national committees
for governmental, National Academies, and industry-council
studies concerning energy sufficiency, disposal of industrial
waste, unconventional gas sources, air quality, alternative
energy sources, ground control in mining, and acid rain. He
was on the visiting committees for the WVU College of Mineral
and Energy Resources and MIT’s Mechanical Engineering
Department. He served for many years on the boards of direc-
tors of Elgin National Industries and Standard Havens, Inc.
After 33 years of service, Bill retired from Consol in 1982
and, with his wife Doris Mae, moved to Florida, remaining
active professionally, both as an advisor and a consultant,
until shortly before his death.
Doris Mae and daughter Kathy predeceased him. He is
survived by his second wife, Martha (Muff), sons William N.
Poundstone Jr. and Scott L. Poundstone, and stepdaughter
Beth Mathias, along with a number of grandchildren.



SIMON RAMO
1913–2016
Founding Member of the National Academy of Engineering—1964
BY RONALD D. SUGAR
SIMON RAMO died June 27, 2016, at age 103 in his home
in Santa Monica. He is frequently cited as the father of the
US Inter continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) system and
the founder of systems engineering.
Si was born May 7, 1913, to Clara and Benjamin Ramo in
Salt Lake City. He received a BS degree in electrical engineer-
ing from the University of Utah, with highest honors, at age 20
and earned his PhD at the California Institute of Technology,
magna cum laude, at age 23. He then joined General Electric
Research Laboratories, where he accumulated 25 patents
before the age of 30 and was cited as one of America’s most
outstanding young electrical engineers.
Pioneering in the generation of microwave electricity, Si
was the first in the United States to produce microwave pulses
at the kilowatt level and the first to create the so-called cavity
resonator magnetron, an approach later fully developed by
others to become the power source for World War II’s micro-
wave radar. He also developed GE’s electron microscope.
His early definitive papers in the leading technical jour-
nals on waves in linear and rotating electron streams detailed
the relationships among frequency, stream density, electron
velocity, and amplification, earning him awards from physics
and electrical engineering professional societies.
331

He published the first book on the characteristics of micro-

wave electricity, Fields and Waves in Modern Radio (John Wiley,
1944), coauthored with John R. Whinnery, and in 1965, again
with Whinnery, coauthored Fields and Waves in Communication
Electronics (John Wiley). The latter became the classic textbook
on the subject, with over a million copies sold. It is used in more
than 100 universities and remains a leading text in the field.
After World War II Ramo joined Hughes Aircraft Company
and launched an entirely new approach to defense electronics.
He was vice president for operations over R&D, product engi-
neering, and manufacturing. In a few years Hughes became
one of the largest and most successful high-tech companies in
the world. Developments at the company were basic to the air
superiority of the United States and an extremely important
contribution to national security.
Ramo left Hughes in 1953 with colleague Dean Wooldridge
to found the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, later to become
TRW and then part of Northrop Grumman Corporation.
At that time the USSR was well along in developing an
ICBM that would be able to bypass the entire US air defense
system. President Eisenhower placed the highest national pri-
ority on the United States’ gaining an ICBM system before
the Soviet Union. The Defense Department asked Ramo to be
the chief engineer for the project, which was to become the
country’s largest.
A contract awarded to Ramo-Wooldridge for systems engi-
neering and technical direction called for leading the develop-
ment of both the missile and extensive flight test facilities in
Florida and a supporting industry to supply the innovative
components. The program called for unprecedented advances
(10 times or more) in rocket propulsion, guidance accuracy,
reentry heat containment, control precision, structures (pay-
load to overall weight), and fuel performance, to name a few.
Within five years, the US ICBM system had its first operational
capability, ahead of the Russians.
Ramo later created Space Technology Laboratories (STL)
as a subsidiary of Ramo-Wooldridge Corp., a year before
the USSR’s Sputnik launch. STL was the first US company to

SIMON RAMO 333
receive a contract for a spacecraft from the newly established

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). An
STL spacecraft was the first both to reach the outer planets and
to go beyond the solar system into far outer space.
Ramo held more than 40 patents, the last of which he
received when he was 100 years old, making him the oldest
patent holder in US history. One of his most recognized devel-
opments was systems engineering, which concentrates on the
design and application of the whole as distinct from the parts,
looking at a problem in its entirety, taking account of all the
facets and variables, and linking the social to the technological.
He wrote many articles about systems engineering, authored
and coauthored a number of texts, and delivered numerous
invited lectures at universities and National Academy and
professional society meetings.
He served on the National Science Board, White House
Council on Energy R&D, Advisory Council to the Secretary
of Commerce, Advisory Council to the Secretary of State for
Science and Foreign Affairs, and many advisory committees
to the Defense Department and NASA.
He received numerous awards and honors, including the
National Medal of Science (1979), bestowed by President
Jimmy Carter for his pioneering work in electronics research
and development. President Gerald Ford appointed him
chair of the President’s Advisory Committee on Science and
Technology. In 1983 he received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, from President
Ronald Reagan. He was inducted into the Business Hall of
Fame and in 1999 received the Lifetime Achievement Award
from the Smithsonian Institution. He also received a number
of honorary university doctorates.
At age 51, Si Ramo was the youngest founding member
of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2013, coincident
with his 100th birthday, the Academy named the Simon Ramo
Founders Award (formerly the Founders Award) to honor an
outstanding NAE member or foreign member who has upheld
the ideals and principles of the NAE through professional,
educational, and personal achievement and accomplishment.

In 1982 the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

(IEEE) board of directors created the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal
for exceptional achievement in systems engineering and sys-
tems science.
His books on science, engineering, and management are
used in universities throughout the world and have been
translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,
Russian, Japanese, and Arabic and republished in English in
China, India, and Taiwan. And his Extraordinary Tennis for the
Ordinary Player (Crown, 1970) holds the sales record for books
on tennis.
During his career, and particularly in his later years, Ramo
became a cherished mentor to dozens of upcoming scientists,
engineers, entrepreneurs, and business executives. In addition
he and his wife Virginia were generous philanthropists focus-
ing on the sciences, arts, and education.
Ramo was married to Virginia (née Smith) for 72 years until
her death in 2009. They are survived by sons Jim and Alan,
four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.



NORMAN C. RASMUSSEN
1927–2003
Elected in 1977
“Contributions to applied radiation detection, the development of

quantitative methods of risk assessment, and nuclear safety.”
BY KENT F. HANSEN
NORMAN CARL RASMUSSEN died July 18, 2003, at the

age of 75. He succumbed to complications of Parkinson’s
disease, from which he suffered for many years. He was a
remarkable, creative scientist, engineer, researcher, and edu-
cator who made important, lasting contributions to nuclear
physics, nuclear engineering, health physics, and risk analysis.
Norm first achieved recognition for his accomplishments
in gamma ray spectroscopy and the quantitative determina-
tion of the nuclear composition of materials. Subsequently he
worked on the analysis of radiation doses in survivors of the
US nuclear weapons testing programs of the 1950s and 1960s.
His most influential work was in directing the Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC) study on nuclear safety, published
as WASH 1400 but better known as the Rasmussen Report.
This pioneering effort evolved into the principal tool of risk
assessment in the nuclear industry.
His public service included the National Science Board,
numerous National Academies panels, and the Defense
Science Board.
This tribute is slightly adapted from a memoir that originally appeared

in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences V. 86 (2005) and

is reprinted with permission.
337

To those of us privileged to know him well, our sense of

loss is dominated by the loss of a wonderful colleague and
friend who possessed a rich collection of delightful human
characteristics.
Early Years
Born November 12, 1927, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Norm,
the fifth of six brothers, grew up in the depths of the Great
Depression on a dairy farm and attended Hershey public
schools. In addition to his schoolwork he had the multiple
chores of a farm boy, an experience that greatly influenced
his career. He learned how to care for animals, service and
maintain farm equipment, and build or repair farm buildings
and facilities. The result was that he became very proficient in
using his hands—and very motivated to use his intelligence.
And the experiences of his youth gave him a lifelong habit of
hard work.
His father died when Norm was in the eighth grade, and
the family moved near Gettysburg, where his grandparents
helped care for the children. He graduated from high school
in 1945 and enlisted in the Navy, which sent him to the Great
Lakes Naval training school, where he became an electronics
technician. He served on active duty until August 1946, when
he was honorably discharged.
That fall, with the help of the GI bill, he enrolled in
Gettysburg College, where he majored in physics because his
interest had been stimulated in high school. He came under
the guidance of George Miller, who intensified his inter-
est in physics and encouraged him to go to graduate school.
Upon graduation (cum laude) in June 1950 Norm enrolled in
graduate school in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. But before leaving Gettysburg he met a young
coed, Thalia Tichenor, who in 1952 became his wife and life-
long soul mate.
At MIT Norm worked for Robley Evans in the Radioactivity
Center, which Evans created and led. The focus was on
experimental low-energy nuclear physics, including the

NORMAN C. RASMUSSEN 339
determination of nuclear energy levels, radiation dosimetry,

and the biological effects of radiation.
It was in the fall of 1952 that I met Norm. He was a teach-
ing assistant in Prof. Evans’ two-semester course on nuclear
physics, which I took as a senior in physics. Norm was always
available to help students understand the material and with
the devilishly long homework assignments.
When one of my classmates and close friends became
a research assistant in the Radioactivity Center, I began to
see Norm frequently outside the classroom. He was an avid
sports enthusiast, both as a player and as a fan. We frequently
shared despair over the fate of the Red Sox and the curse of the
Bambino.1 In our later years as faculty colleagues we would
occasionally sneak off in the afternoon to go watch the Red
Sox together.
Academic Career
Norm completed his PhD in 1956, with a very creative experi-
mental thesis titled “Standardization of Electron Capture
Isotopes,” focused on determining absolute nuclear decay
rates. After graduation he remained in the MIT Physics
Department as an instructor while continuing his experi
mental work in the Radioactivity Center.
His hands-on experience as a child made him an extremely
versatile and creative experimentalist. In the 1950s the tools
available for detection and measurements were primitive.
Norm was in the forefront of developing coincidence-counting
techniques to measure decay schemes, which was the focus of
his early papers.
At this time, MIT was building its Nuclear Research Reactor
and expanding the program in nuclear engineering into a full
1
For readers not familiar with the curse, it began in 1920 when Harry
Frazee, owner of the Red Sox, sold his star pitcher, Babe Ruth, to the
New York Yankees for cash. Frazee subsequently used the cash to pro-
mote a Broadway flop, whereas the Yankees converted Babe Ruth to
a hitter. And the rest is a well-known long history of triumph for the
Yankees and tragedy for the Red Sox.

department. Norm was invited to become an assistant profes-

sor in the new department to help in the creation of a curricu-
lum that included experimental methods.
He also became an important experimentalist using the
new reactor. He was a key participant in the building of a
6-meter bent crystal spectrometer that was used for gamma
ray spectroscopy studies for many years. He migrated from
the determination of decay spectra to the use of spectra for
measuring nuclear composition. This led him to a major pro-
gram for the measurement of spent nuclear fuel composition,
a matter of significant importance to the nuclear weapons
programs where both tritium and plutonium were created in
production reactors. This work also brought him international
renown, as the International Atomic Energy Agency adopted
his techniques for use in proliferation studies.
In addition to being a magnificent experimentalist, Norm
was exceedingly creative in applying new technologies to
nuclear spectroscopy problems. He was among the leaders
in adopting the use of solid state devices for photon detec-
tion and measurement, and an important contributor to the
development of lithium-drifted germanium detectors. He also
recognized the importance of data analysis and was the first
spectroscopist to adopt the then-new fast Fourier transform to
data analysis.
Part of his training and background was an appreciation of
the importance of statistics to the analysis and interpretation
of data. Robley Evans was very firm in training all his students
to be careful and thorough in their analyses. This training was
reflected in Norm’s work and laid the foundation for his sub-
sequent appreciation of probabilistic risk assessment. It also
made Norm an excellent poker player, a pleasure he pursued
regularly and profitably.
One of Norm’s closest colleagues and collaborators was
Theos J. (Tommy) Thompson, who came to MIT in 1957 to
design the research reactor. In 1966 Tommy began a special
summer program in nuclear power plant safety, bringing
together experts in all aspects of safety—from reactor physics
and engineering to materials problems, instrumentation and

control issues, plant operations, modeling and simulation, and

plant licensing. Norm was a participant in the program, and in
1969 became the director when Tommy left to serve as an AEC
commissioner. As a result Norm was in the position of being
an experienced analyst with a deep understanding of most of
the issues involved in nuclear power technology.
The Reactor Safety Study

The first US civilian nuclear power plant, Dresden 1 (in
northern Illinois), went online in 1959, followed by Yankee
Rowe (in western Massachusetts) in 1960. The electric utilities
began a rapid increase in plant orders and construction. The
first large unit—over 650 MWe—was at Oyster Creek in south-
ern New Jersey. The plant was ordered in 1963, construction
was approved in 1964, and the plant went into commercial ser-
vice in 1969. Another large plant, Nine Mile Point (in upstate
New York), also went into service that year. Thereafter growth
was very rapid: four plants in 1970, four more in 1971, and
eight in 1972. In 1973 US utilities ordered 41 nuclear plants.
The industry was growing—and attracting attention.
Opposition to nuclear power had begun to take shape in
the 1960s, with concern focused initially on radiation from the
plants and effluents and then on safety and the consequences
of large accidents. Interveners began to attack the licensing
process and create expensive delays in plant construction and
licensing.
The plant designs were based on the concept of the “maxi-
mum credible accident.” Usually this took the form of a large
rupture in a main coolant pipe, depriving the core of cooling
water. Arguments in the courts and in the public arena were
complicated because of the lack of quantitative assessments of
the real risks associated with the plants.
Senator John Pastore (Rhode Island), chair of Congress’s Joint
Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), wrote in 1972 to James
Schlesinger, head of the AEC, encouraging the AEC to under-
take a study to address the issues. Schlesinger agreed and went
about creating a large-scale project for that purpose. Because of

the significance of the study it was felt that it should be led by

someone outside the AEC. Norm’s name emerged as a likely
leader of the project based on his association with the issue, his
neutrality as an academic, and his scientific reputation. Norm
agreed to head the multiyear, multimillion-dollar study.
He was very fortunate to have as a close collaborator Saul
Levine, deputy director of the AEC’s Office of Research.
Together they began to review potential tools for risk analysis
and encountered some classic work by Chauncey Starr and
F.R. Farmer that suggested probabilistic approaches to address
licensing and siting. Their work also considered the use of
event trees to identify how things could go wrong, and fault
trees to develop quantitative evaluations of the likelihood of
an accident. This was to be followed by an assessment of the
consequences of every failure (e.g., radiation release quanti-
ties, pathways to the environment, and effects on population).
Norm and Saul created a program to examine the risk associ-
ated with both major types of US reactors (pressurized water
and boiling water). Their team ultimately involved a large
number of analysts at the national laboratories, the utilities,
and several universities.
The activities of the AEC were overseen by the JCAE, which
had a deep interest in the future of nuclear energy and in the
findings of the study. Norm was frequently called on to testify
before the JCAE. He was an extraordinary witness thanks to
his great depth of knowledge, his ability to put complex issues
in a comprehensible form, his forthright presentations, and his
wonderful sense of humor.
At one hearing with Senator Pastore presiding, Norm was
explaining the concepts and use of event trees and fault trees.
In the midst of his testimony the quorum bell rang. Senator
Pastore interrupted Norm and explained that the commit-
tee members would have to leave in about 10 minutes. He
asked Norm how much longer he would need to complete
his remarks. Norm replied, “Senator, that depends on how
smart you are!” The staffers in attendance were all aghast, but
Senator Pastore roared with laughter and suggested that the
committee adjourn promptly.

The study report, WASH 1400, was released in draft form

in 1974 and the final version in October 1975. It was received
with appreciation from the industry because it concluded that
the risks of nuclear power were very low. It was vigorously
attacked by opponents because the conclusion was unaccept-
able to them. There followed an extensive period of review,
debate, and reassessment.
Appreciation for the report grew after the Three Mile Island
(TMI) accident. The report had suggested that small breaks
in piping were much more significant than a large break acci-
dent, and TMI was in fact a small break. In the aftermath of the
accident the Kemeny Commission2 suggested that the method
be used in risk assessment.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) replaced
the AEC in 1975, and after TMI it began to use probabilistic
risk assessment (PRA) for specific safety issues. For example,
issues associated with loss of offsite power to a station were
analyzed and found to be significant, leading to new regula-
tions. The commission went even further in the 1990s by decid-
ing to use PRA to judge the impact of the usefulness of various
safety regulations. Today the industry operates under what
are called “risk-informed regulations,” which allow utilities
to use PRA to adjust their service and maintenance activities.
Partly as a result of these changes US plants are now among
the most productive in the world.
Norm received well-deserved recognition for this pio-
neering work. He was elected to the National Academy of
Engineering in 1978 and the National Academy of Sciences in
1979. In 1985 he received the Department of Energy’s Enrico
Fermi award, the most prestigious of its honors.
The Fermi award had a cash stipend of $100,000 and a few
weeks after receiving it Norm told me of his adventures with
his new riches. He deposited the check at his bank and waited
a few days to inquire at an ATM about his balance. He said
he just wanted to see that much money in his account. The
2
John G. Kemeny, president of Dartmouth College, chaired the
President’s Commission on the Accident at TMI.

balance did not reflect the deposit. He waited another few

days and tried again, and again the deposit wasn’t shown.
After a third trial and several weeks after making the deposit,
he went into the bank to ask what had happened. The teller
listened to his story and then patiently explained that the ATM
screens showed only 5 digits before the decimal.
With the release of WASH 1400 Norm was involuntarily
committed to being a public figure. He spent an incredible
amount of time traveling the world explaining the method-
ology, defending nuclear power, and helping develop the
applications. He was fair in his debates, never indulging in dis-
tortion, misrepresentation, or exaggeration. He was appalled
by the poor quality of some of the actions of some opponents.
Most of all he was distressed by the unwillingness of some
opponents to discuss issues offstage and off-camera.
He tried to understand the nature of the opposition and
how together the industry and the opponents might find con-
structive resolution. He kept on his wall a cartoon showing
two figures separated by a deep, symmetric chasm. One char-
acter is saying to the other, “Come over to my side, the view is
much clearer.” He always tried to keep a balanced perspective
on the nuclear issue and did his best to convince others to do
the same.
While maintaining his activities in the nuclear power arena
he continued an active academic career. He became head of
MIT’s Nuclear Engineering Department in 1975 and served
in that position for seven years. In 1983 he was named the
McAfee Professor of Nuclear Engineering. During these years
he continued an active research program but with the focus
now on risk assessment.
He was highly sought after by students to be their thesis
supervisor. The student grapevine was, and is, well attuned to
the merits of various faculty members as advisors, and Norm
was one of the best, giving his students lots of time, attention,
and moral support. He supervised more than 60 graduate
theses, and each of his graduates became a lifelong friend.
He was appointed by President Reagan to the National
Science Board in 1982 and served for six years. He was a

member of the Defense Science Board from 1974 to 1978 and

continued as a consultant until his retirement in 1990. He
retired from active teaching in 1994 in part because of his
health.
Norm will be most remembered by the scientific commu-
nity for his remarkable achievements in nuclear power plant
safety. Every nuclear plant around the world now has a tool
that allows for the assessment of risks and for improving the
safety of plant design and operations. The USNRC has used
the results of his methods to assist in identifying new regu-
latory processes and procedures, resulting in much greater
insights into system design and performance. All new reactor
concepts are influenced by the ability to examine their safety
in a quantitative way. Other technical areas are beginning to
adopt the probabilistic risk assessment approach.
The Man
Norm maintained remarkably broad personal interests and
activities. He was very good with his hands and pursued
crafts with diligence and skill—he made much of the furniture
in his home just for the sheer joy of craftsmanship.
He and Thalia purchased land in New Hampshire on a
small lake, and he cleared the land and by himself built a small
home. He would visit barn sales throughout New England
to find old beams and boards and incorporate them into his
house. As part of his land clearing he purchased an abandoned
bulldozer, restored it to operating condition, and used it both
to improve the road in to his property and to prepare a site
for a sauna, which he again built by hand. He loved spend-
ing time in the summer at this house on the lake. In the fall he
would go up on weekends to cut wood for the stove and fire-
place, and in the winter he used the home whenever he could
arrange a ski trip to the mountains.
Perhaps my favorite tale of Norm has to do with a chilly
October Saturday of wood chopping. After enough effort,
he fired up his sauna to relax. After he had been inside long
enough, he thought he might prove his Scandinavian roots by

leaping into the lake. Knowing that this late in the season no
one would be at the lake he ran out of his sauna in the buff,
down the path to his dock, and, pounding his chest and yell-
ing like Tarzan, he leaped into the lake. Only after becoming
airborne did he note that two frightened women were sitting
in a rowboat fishing just off the end of his dock.
Norm was very athletic and participated in all kinds of
sports. He was particularly fond of skiing, and we always
arranged our teaching schedules to have common days off to
go skiing in the middle of the week. We also served together
on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Idaho National
Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and frequently
managed to find time to ski in Utah or Wyoming on those trips.
Beyond sports Norm had a passion for bird watching.
Wherever he traveled he took binoculars in the hope of having
a few minutes to see new species. As part of his duties on the
National Science Board he traveled to the South Pole, where
he made arrangements to be helicoptered over to the ice shelf
in order to see emperor penguins—he was particularly fond
of them and found this trip one of the most exciting of his life.
Afterward he gave a seminar in the Nuclear Department with
a slide show that included the penguins. He appeared at the
seminar dressed in a penguin costume, which created one of
the lasting moments in the department’s history. He also took
a vacation to the Pribilof Islands in order to see the unique
species there.
Norm was blessed with intelligence, a strong work ethic,
and a wonderful family life that was apparent to all who knew
him. There is no doubt that the greatest single inspiration in
his life was his wife, Thalia. Together they raised two children,
Neil and Arlene, and later enjoyed four grandchildren.
Author’s Note
I would like to thank several colleagues and friends for their
assistance in preparing this biography. Gordon Brownell,
Frank Massé, and Costa Maletskos were with Norm in his

early years at the Radioactivity Center and provided much

valuable information. George Apostolakis was very generous
in reviewing material regarding WASH 1400 and its impact on
the industry.


EUGENE M. RASMUSSON
1929–2015
Elected in 1999
“For contributions to understanding climate variability and

establishing the basis for practical predictions of El Niño.”
SUBMITTED BY MARGARET A. LEMONE,

SUMANT NIGAM, AND JOHN M. WALLACE
EUGENE MARTIN RASMUSSON, a kind and generous

man whose fundamental contributions were the collection,
integration, and application of comprehensive datasets to in-
crease understanding of the water cycle and Earth’s climate
variability, died March 22, 2015, at the age of 86.
He quantified the important role of land- and ocean-surface-
atmosphere interactions in weather and climate, provided
convincing observational evidence for the postulated relation
ships involved in El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and
facilitated the collection of data needed for documenting
and monitoring El Niño and its impacts, beginning with the
1982–1983 event. In so doing, he fostered a strong sense of
community among his peers in the geosciences: in particu-
lar, the sharing of ideas, the culture of working cooperatively
for the benefit of society rather than merely for personal gain,
and the cultivation of the next generation of scientists. Gene is
survived by Georgene (née Sachtleben), his wife of 54 years,
their four daughters Mary, Ruth Anne, Elizabeth, and Kristin,
and six grandchildren.
Most of this text is excerpted or adapted from Rasmusson’s obituary

published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, October

2015, pp. 1805–1808, by John M. Wallace and Sumant Nigam. Reprinted
with the permission of the American Meteorological Society.
349

Gene was born February 27, 1929, on a farm 5 miles south of

Lindsborg in McPherson County, Kansas, the oldest of seven
children in a family descended from Norwegian and Swedish
immigrants. The early years on the farm and its strenuous daily
routine were, in his words, “fundamental in the development
of my personality and philosophy of life.” Likewise, his vivid
memories of the Dust Bowl, which peaked when he started
elementary school, “were a factor in stimulating my interest in
meteorology and ultimately in determining my future career.”
He also attributed the awakening of his interest in sci-
ence, which transcended meteorology, to occasional programs
aired on “Cavalcade of America,” sponsored by the DuPont
Corporation. He listened to these on the battery-powered
radio that his family acquired when he was 7 years old.
Gene’s career trajectory was not typical. After graduating
from the Lindsborg high school in 1946 he enrolled at Kansas
State University, where he earned a bachelor of science in civil
engineering, graduating with an Air Force reserve commission
in 1950. After working for 9 months as a highway surveyor, he
was called to active duty. He took a 1-year basic meteorology
training course at the University of Washington in Seattle, and
then served as a weather forecaster in support of pilot training
at Vance AFB in Enid, Oklahoma. In 1953 he got his “overseas
assignment”—which turned out to be at Elmendorf AFB in
what was then the Territory of Alaska.
Gene was discharged from active duty in the Air Force
in May 1955 and, after a short stint as a plant engineer with
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. in Seattle, returned to
meteorology, joining the US Weather Bureau as a river fore-
caster in St. Louis. The next 7 years of his work in hydrol-
ogy and river forecasting proved to be a valuable asset in his
future career.
Taking graduate-level night courses at St. Louis University,
he completed an MS degree in engineering mechanics in
May 1963. A few months later he was awarded a US Weather
Bureau scholarship to study at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where he earned a PhD in meteorology in 1966,
with Victor Starr as his mentor.

EUGENE M. RASMUSSON 351
Like most of Starr’s students, Gene considered the ques-

tion of how the atmospheric general circulation fulfills the bal-
ance requirements for the conservation of mass, energy, and
momentum. However, Gene’s PhD thesis was unique: Drawing
on his flood forecasting experience, he treated the surface and
atmospheric branches of continental-scale hydrology not as
independent entities but rather as interacting elements of a
coupled system. His analysis of the water budget over North
America, published in 1967 and 1968, came to be recognized as
an important step toward an interdisciplinary approach to the
climate system. It laid the groundwork for contemporary pro-
grams such as the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment
(GEWEX) and, more generally, for the treatment of land sur-
face processes in numerical weather prediction models and
global climate models.
From 1966 to 1970 Gene worked at the Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL). His most notable contribu-
tion during this time was a monograph on General Circulation
Statistics in collaboration with Abraham H. Oort. Like today’s
model-based reanalysis products, their analysis served as
a resource for numerous empirical studies and as “ground
truth” against which the results of newly developed global
climate models were compared.
Gene left GFDL in 1970 to lead the newly formed BOMEX
Analysis Project (BOMAP), whose mission was to process,
analyze, and interpret the data acquired during the 1969
Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment
(BOMEX). Under Gene’s leadership, BOMAP—which com-
bined turbulence measurements with large-scale wind,
temperature, and moisture fields derived from radiosonde
data to elucidate the maintenance of the marine boundary
layer—took shape and the results were published in 1973.
The experience and knowledge acquired in BOMEX and
BOMAP were incorporated into the planning for subsequent
field experiments, including the GARP (Global Atmospheric
Research Programme) Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE),
which stimulated advances in parameterizing deep convec-
tion, radiative flux divergence, ocean-atmosphere fluxes, and

boundary-layer processes in numerical weather prediction

models.
In 1979 Gene was asked to organize the diagnostic branch
of the newly formed NOAA Climate Analysis Center (CAC).
His appointment came at a time when large-scale atmosphere-
ocean interaction was being recognized as an important field
of study. About a decade earlier, Jacob Bjerknes had postulated
the existence of a physical link between El Niño in the equa-
torial eastern Pacific Ocean and the planetary-scale Southern
Oscillation in the atmospheric sea level pressure field discov-
ered by Sir Gilbert Walker 50 years earlier.
Gene’s 1982 diagnostic study with Thomas H. Carpenter,
“Variations in Tropical Sea Surface Temperature and Surface
Wind Fields Associated with the Southern Oscillation/El
Niño,” provided conclusive evidence of the relationships
envisioned by Bjerknes. With over 1,600 citations to date in
the Web of Science, it is by far Gene’s most influential paper. It
is fair to say that it inspired the use of the acronym “ENSO,”
which symbolizes the interdependence of El Niño and the
Southern Oscillation.
Gene set to work assembling a staff and creating the data-
sets and analysis tools needed to monitor the global climate
in near real time. Under his direction, the diagnostic branch
developed the Climate Diagnostics Database to monitor
atmospheric circulation, the Climate Anomaly Monitoring

System for land surface temperature and rainfall, and a global
sea surface temperature (SST) analysis. By 1982 Gene and his
staff had put in place an operational ENSO monitoring and
diagnostic system that enabled the CAC to disseminate, in
near real time, information on the evolving anomalies and
impacts of the remarkably intense 1982–1983 El Niño, bring-
ing world-wide recognition to the CAC.
In 1983 Gene was awarded the NOAA Administrator’s
Award for this work. He was widely quoted in national and
international newspaper and news magazine stories, inter-
viewed on numerous radio and television programs, and fea-
tured in articles on El Niño in Readers Digest (1983) and National

EUGENE M. RASMUSSON 353
Geographic (1984). And in 1986 he was part of a small scientific

delegation that was granted a personal audience with Pope
John Paul, who was interested in the human impacts of El
Niño events.
Gene retired from NOAA in 1986 to become a research sci-
entist at the University of Maryland, where he continued his
research and participation in international programs on cli-
mate variability and global/regional hydrology.
He was also active in the work of the National Research
Council. He chaired the advisory panel that oversaw the design
of an exhibit devoted to global warming at the Koshland Science
Museum, as well as the Climate Research Committee and the
Committee on the Future of Rainfall Measuring Missions. In
the 1980s and 1990s he served on the Board on Atmospheric
Sciences and Climate, the Global-Ocean-Atmosphere-Land
System Panel, the Panel on Model-Assimilated Data Sets for
Atmospheric and Oceanic Research, and the Advisory Panel
for the Tropical Ocean/Global Atmosphere (TOGA) Program.
Gene received the Jule G. Charney Award from the
American Meteorological Society (AMS) in 1989, and he deliv-
ered the Victor Starr Memorial Lecture at MIT in 1992 and the
AMS Robert E. Horton Lecture in Hydrology in 1994. He was
elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1997
and a member of the National Academy of Engineering in
1999. As AMS president in 1998, he was instrumental in adding
the Journal of Hydrometeorology to the portfolio of AMS publi-
cations. In 2002 he received the AMS Charles Franklin Brooks
Award, and in 2007 he was honored at a one-day named sym-
posium at the AMS annual meeting in San Antonio. In 2010 he
was elected to honorary membership in the AMS.
Gene and Georgene established the Eugene Rasmusson
Endowed Fellowship awarded annually to an outstanding
graduate student who has advanced to candidacy in doctoral
research in atmospheric and oceanic science at the University
of Maryland. And in 2011 the university’s Department of
Atmospheric and Oceanic Science launched the Eugene
Rasmusson Lectures to honor its distinguished faculty member.

Air Force Lt. Col. (ret’d.) Eugene Martin Rasmusson was

laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military
honors (including a 21-gun salute) the afternoon of July 22,
2015, under blue skies, surrounded by immediate family and
several dozen friends and colleagues.


Sir Denis Rooke sheltered by HRH Prince Philip, on the occasion of

the 150th anniversary of the Great Exhibition of 1851; reproduced
with the permission of His Royal Highness.

DENIS ROOKE
1924–2008
Elected in 1987
“For many technological contributions, including his role in design

and construction of the world’s first liquefied natural gas system.”
BY DAVID WALLACE
SIR DENIS ERIC ROOKE, OM, CBE, FREng, FRS, died

September 2, 2008, aged 84. He was a commanding figure in
every sense in engineering and business, whose career in the
gas industry culminated as chairman for 13 years of British
Gas, then a nationalized monopoly, world-leading in technical
innovation and profitable for the UK government.
He was born in New Cross, in Southeast London, on April 2,
1924, the younger son of F.G. Rooke, a commercial salesman. A
precocious child, he went to primary school at age 3, two years
earlier than usual, but his next four years were dogged by ill-
ness and were spent mostly at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
He emerged at the age of 7 unable to read, write, or walk prop-
erly. It made him determined: “I worked like hell.”
At Westminster City school he made exceptional progress
and went on to the Addey and Stanhope School and then to
University College London, where he graduated with first-
class honors in mechanical engineering and later did a post-
graduate diploma in chemical engineering.
When he graduated in 1944 he joined the Royal Electrical
and Mechanical Engineers (REME) and was sent to India at
a time when there was a real threat from the Japanese army.
From the experience he decided that the problems of world
357

poverty would be solved only by technological skill. He was

promoted to the rank of major at age 23.
His lifelong career in the gas industry began in 1947 with a
temporary appointment at the Metropolitan Gas Company. In
1949 he moved to a permanent position, working first at the
South Eastern Gas Board on coal-tar byproducts.
His first opportunity to be involved in innovation of global
significance came in 1957, when he went to the United States
to engage with the project to redesign the 5,000-ton Methane
Pioneer to enable it to transport liquid natural gas (LNG).
At that time in the United Kingdom, “town gas” was
extracted from coal in some 1,000 local gasworks. The prod-
uct was dirty, smelly, expensive, and poisonous (implicated to
some degree in 70 percent of all suicides). As a source of heat-
ing, it seemed set for irreversible decline in the face of compe-
tition from electricity and oil.
In 1959, after spending months in Lake Charles, Louisiana,
overseeing the conversion of the Methane Pioneer to transport
LNG, Denis was in technical charge and personally sailed
on the first voyage across the Atlantic. It was a storm-tossed,
23-day epic from the Gulf of Mexico to Canvey Island (UK),
the route determined by the necessity to avoid shipping lanes
because of the perceived risk of explosion. But it opened the
way for commercial-scale UK imports of Algerian gas, the
phasing out of coal, and the development of a national supply
grid. Globally, it pioneered the multibillion-dollar LNG indus-
try, now taken for granted.
The UK gas industry was transformed by the discovery of
a huge methane reservoir at Groningen in North Holland. The
Permian Basin in which it was located extended under the
North Sea toward the United Kingdom, and exploration there
was successful. The debate was whether to reform it to town
gas or to convert the more than 13 million domestic, commer-
cial, and industrial gas appliances to use the higher calorific
value but lower flame speed of natural gas.
Denis sat down with the chief accountant and on a couple
of sides of foolscap they estimated the cost benefits of direct
supply. The decision was made to undertake the conversion

DENIS ROOKE 359
program, which was completed over the next 7 years at a cost

of £100 million (around $250 million, or more than $1.5 billion
at today’s prices). It proved a resounding success, the indus-
try shed its dated and dirty image, and natural gas became
the fuel of choice. Denis played a leading role in the turbulent
political and commercial battles between the gas industry and
producing groups for the purchase of the offshore gas.
The development and construction of the reception termi-
nals and the national gas grid were essential concomitants.
Denis was much involved with the impact of liquefied
methane from Algeria, which had started in 1965 and gave the
UK gas industry all-important experience for these develop-
ments. The construction of a national high-pressure pipeline
grid, integrating the previous system of municipal coal gas
plants and local gas holders, was a major technical achieve-
ment, not least in its remarkable safety record over 40 years.
Throughout his career, Denis was a strong supporter of
technical innovation. The offshore gas fields in Morecambe
Bay were developed using slant drilling. The research centers
that he set up developed the technology of fire and explosion
engineering, the use of plastic pipes for gas supply, and intel-
ligent pigs for inspection of pipelines. And he gave credit for
these successes: “My team did this,” not “I did this.”
His rise at British Gas culminated with his appointment as
executive chair in 1976. At that time, British Gas was a nation-
alized industry, so no memorial to Denis would be complete
without reference to his relationships with successive prime
ministers and members of the cabinet. His style was that of
a commanding captain of industry, a passionate champion
for his company, with great physical presence—large, craggy,
with a lantern jaw. He was variously portrayed as gruff, auto-
cratic, and outspoken. According to former MP Tam Dalyell,
his contributions to discussions of the Parliamentary and
Scientific Committee were a powerful combination of mod-
esty and blunt forthrightness. He was the archenemy of any
sign of cant among politicians, of scratching for easy options.
Both despite and because of this directness, he was held
in the highest regard by many Labour and Conservative

politicians alike, including James Callaghan, prime minister

during Denis’ first years as British Gas chair, and, in the early
1980s, the Conservative energy secretary Peter Walker and sci-
ence minister William Waldegrave.
However, his relations with Nigel Lawson, Secretary of
State for Energy in 1981–1983, were, in Denis’ word, “cryo-
genic.” According to a later interview, Lawson “hated my guts
from my feet to the top of my head”; the dislike was probably
mutual.
The Conservative Bow Group, among others, wanted to
see British Gas privatized and broken up in order to pro-
mote competition. After a great deal of argument and much
hectoring from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Rooke
struck a deal with Lawson’s successor Peter Walker, whom
he greatly respected. Instead of breaking up the industry into
separate enterprises, the gas transmission, distribution, and
retailing business was turned, by Act of Parliament in 1986,
from a publicly owned single monopoly into a single private
sector monopoly, British Gas plc. The initial public offering of
135 pence per share valued the company at £5.4 billion, the
largest-ever offering in world stock markets at the time. It was
oversubscribed by a factor of three. In the 25 years follow-
ing privatization, excluding dividends, value to shareholders
increased 12-fold, outstripping the 3.5-fold increase for the
wider UK stock market in that period.
Denis retired in 1989. During his 40 years, through determi-
nation and technical innovation, he transformed an industry
in decline into a great company. His achievement of ensuring
that British Gas was sold in one piece was, however, relatively
short-lived. After investigations, sometimes rancorous, by the
Mergers and Monopolies Commission, the barriers prevent-
ing competition in the supply of gas to homes were disman-
tled and British Gas was split into three parts.
He was elected to the Fellowship of Engineering (now the
Royal Academy of Engineering) in 1977, was its president from
1986 to 1991, and received its Prince Philip Medal in 1992. He
became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1978 and received its
Rumford Medal in 1986 in recognition of his service to scientific

DENIS ROOKE 361
developments in the gas industry. He was elected a foreign

associate of the National Academy of Engineering in 1987.
His many other professional roles included president of
the Institution of Gas Engineers, which awarded him its high-
est honors, and of the Pipeline Industries Guild, Welding
Institute, Association for Science Education, and British Science
Association. He received the James Watt International Medal
of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and the George E.
Davis Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.
Denis was highly valued by the many bodies that appointed
him as chair, among them the Council for National Academic
Awards, Ramsay Fellowships Memorial Trust, National
Science Museum, National Museum of Photography, Film, and
Television, and Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.
He was active and respected in the life of the City of London:
a founder and past master of the Worshipful Company of
Engineers, an honorary freeman of the Worshipful Company
of Tallow Chandlers, and a liveryman of the Worshipful
Company of Painter-Stainers.
He was awarded more than 20 honorary fellowships and
honorary degrees in science, engineering, technology, and law.
Denis was appointed chancellor of the Loughborough
University of Technology in 1989 and it was in this role that I
met him when I went as vice chancellor in 1994. During my 12
years there, he was hugely supportive to me in the very best
ways—even when we dropped “Technology” and became
“Loughborough University,” which was regarded as the end
of the world by many in the university’s engineering depart-
ments (it wasn’t).
His presence at degree ceremonies was immense: a large
figure, feet firmly planted, he congratulated and shook hands
with every one of the 3,000 or so students graduating annu-
ally. He missed only two occasions, for his admission to the
Order of Merit and for his honorary degree at Cambridge,
where the university orator, Anthony Bowen, did a superb
job of encapsulating both the gas industry and Denis in Latin:
“Lux, calor . . .”—with poetic license I translate as “enlighten-
ment and warmth.”

He was awarded a CBE in 1970 and knighted in 1977 in rec-

ognition of his services to the gas industry. It is public knowl-
edge that he was offered appointment to the House of Lords
and declined. In an interview with Tam Dalyell, he explained:
“throughout my life, I have taken the view that either I do a
job properly or not at all. To ‘do the Lords properly’ I believe
that one has to be a regular attendee, week in and week out.
My other interests simply do not permit anything approach-
ing acceptable attendance.” He was the clearest of thinkers,
not least about his own position.
His greatest honor was appointment to the Order of Merit,
which is reserved for individuals of the very highest distinc-
tion across all walks of life. With only 24 members at any one
time, it is wholly in the gift of the Queen. It was probably par-
ticularly special to Denis because no politician was involved
in the decision. He had the highest regard for the service to the
nation given by the senior members of the Royal Family, par-
ticularly the engagement with engineering of Prince Philip,
Duke of Edinburgh; as the photograph shows, the respect was
reciprocated.
Denis’ hobbies were photography, particularly of flowers,
and music, especially opera.
In 1949 he married Elizabeth Brenda Evans, a constant com-
panion throughout his life. He is also survived by their daugh-
ter Diana.



STEVEN B. SAMPLE
1940–2016
Elected in 1998
“For contributions to consumer electronics and leadership

in interdisciplinary research and education.”
BY C. L. MAX NIKIAS
STEVEN BROWNING SAMPLE, the venerable and beloved

tenth president of the University of Southern California, died
March 29, 2016. He was 75 years old.
During his extraordinary life, Dr. Sample cultivated a ster-
ling reputation as an admired colleague, a gifted scholar, and
a leader of international caliber. His determination, optimism,
and resilience inspired the entire USC community to transcend
challenges and turn them into enduring moments of transfor-
mation. He left a far-reaching and lasting legacy, and will be
remembered as a deeply influential force in American higher
education.
During his exceptionally productive tenure at USC, which
spanned nearly two decades, Dr. Sample attracted nationally
renowned faculty, increased the university’s international
stature and reach, and built meaningful partnerships with
its local communities. Notably, he oversaw a landmark fund
raising campaign, at the time the most ambitious in the history
of higher education. He stewarded five transformational gifts
of over $100 million, thus ensuring the university’s continuing
expansion of groundbreaking research, an exemplary medical
enterprise, and world-class facilities. He also embarked on a
then-unprecedented capital construction campaign, which
reshaped the university’s physical landscape.
365

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 29, 1940, Steven

Sample grew up there and in Westport, Connecticut. His
mother was a civic activist and his father a sales manager for
an electric motor company. Dr. Sample was deeply apprecia-
tive of the values of strong family, hard work, and a good edu-
cation that his upbringing instilled in him. He often said that
“most of our leaders, powerful and influential citizens, and
most successful people, come from humble origins.”
While earning his BS in electrical engineering from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), he met
Kathryn Brunkow, his college sweetheart who became his
loving wife of more than 55 years. He attributed much of
his success to the strength he drew from his marriage and
from Kathryn’s unflagging devotion. This, and the lessons of
his childhood, fueled his indefatigable work ethic.
He earned his master’s (in 1963) and doctorate (in 1965, at
age 24) in electrical engineering at UIUC and then spent time
as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Purdue
University. But soon his insatiable curiosity for broader scien-
tific horizons led him to join Melpar, Inc. as a senior research
scientist. There he not only worked on Gemini 7 but also made
history when he designed and patented the digital controls
behind the touch panel now used in microwave ovens and
other appliances in virtually every home in the United States.
When he was 29 he received a fellowship that allowed him
to work alongside the president of Purdue. He witnessed
the ways a university president must employ a multitude of
skills and cultivate a broad understanding of various fields,
which appealed to his endlessly inquisitive mind and drive to
innovate.
In 1974 Dr. Sample was appointed vice president for aca-
demic affairs and graduate dean of the University of Nebraska
for eight years.
At the age of 41 he became president of the State University
of New York at Buffalo. During his tenure (1982–1991), the
university made unprecedented gains in establishing itself as
a major national research center. Perhaps the most prominent
symbol of this was the university’s election to the prestigious

STEVEN B. SAMPLE 367
Association of American Universities, whose members consti-

tute less than 2 percent of the nation’s colleges and universi-
ties. He also implemented economic development initiatives,
such as the use of university equipment by local industries,
and unorthodox programs to create high-tech incubators,
which spawned 41 new firms in five years. This approach to
education in service of the community became a recurring
theme in his career.
Upon arriving at USC as president (1991–2010), Dr. and
Mrs. Sample began a love affair with the Trojan Family. They
embraced every facet of the university and quickly identified
its potential as a microcosm of the 21st century global society.
Thanks to his tactical leadership and prudent foresight, USC
transformed from a regionally well-known private school to
one of the most selective universities in the nation.
One of the keys of this rapid ascent was Dr. Sample’s dedi-
cation to attracting the most brilliant scholars and researchers
in the United States. Under his leadership USC doubled both
its research funding and the number of faculty elected to mem-
bership in the National Academy of Engineering, National
Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Medicine.
Faculty member George Olah was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry for work he conducted at USC.
In addition to recruiting stellar faculty, Dr. Sample dramati-
cally increased USC’s global stature and reach. He made a
series of trips to forge international partnerships and led efforts
to establish university satellite offices in several countries. He
cofounded the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, a con-
sortium of the region’s 45 leading research universities.
The achievement that perhaps best reflects Dr. Sample’s
character, and his view of a meaningful education, is the mas-
sive community outreach effort he launched at USC. Seeing
that many of the areas around the university were struggling
economically, he met with community leaders to hear their
concerns and worked with them to find solutions to long-
standing problems. His primary focus was to improve public
schools in the area, and the USC Family of Schools—a group
of local schools “adopted by USC”—became the flagship of

his community programs. Among these is the Neighborhood

Academic Initiative, a seven-year precollege enrichment pro-
gram designed to prepare low-income neighborhood students
for admission to a college or university. USC’s tremendous
commitment to public service led to the university being
named Time magazine’s College of the Year 2000.
For his unparalleled leadership of both SUNY Buffalo and
USC, Dr. Sample is widely acclaimed as one of the best univer-
sity presidents of the past half-century as well as an accom-
plished engineer and scientist. He was elected to the National
Academy of Engineering in 1998 and the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences in 2003.
He received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers Founders Medal, as well as honorary doctor-
ates from the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University,
the University of Sheffield in England, the University of
Nebraska, Hebrew Union College, Canisius College in Buffalo,
Northeastern University, D’Youville College in Buffalo, and
SUNY Buffalo.
In addition to Kathryn, he is survived by daughters Michelle
Sample Smith (Kirk) and Elizabeth Sample, and grandchildren
Kathryn and Andrew Smith.
Very few possess mettle, focus, and determination to peer
into the fog of uncertainty, sense the promise within, and move
boldly forward. Dr. Sample taught us that the greatest prom-
ise always comes not from places but from people—the true
bedrock of any great university. During his celebrated tenure
of nineteen and a half years as president of the University of
Southern California, he was a champion of the kind of edu-
cation that teaches us to understand ourselves and our capa-
bilities, and encourages us to use that knowledge in service to
humanity.


Photo provided by the University of Notre Dame

ROGER A. SCHMITZ
1934–2013
Elected in 1984
“For leadership in chemical reaction engineering, particularly in the

experimental and theoretical understanding of stability and oscillation
in chemical reactors, and in engineering education in general.”
BY JOAN F. BRENNECKE
ROGER ANTHONY SCHMITZ, Keating-Crawford P rofessor

Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, died October 11,
2013, at the age of 78, after having been diagnosed with ALS
earlier that year.
Roger was born in Carlyle, a small town in Illinois, on
October 22, 1934. After high school he went to work as a stock
clerk in a local store and then started his own ice service. His
entrepreneurial activities were soon interrupted when he was
drafted into the US Army in November 1953 during the Korean
War (although he spent most of his service in Germany).
When he was discharged in October 1955, Roger enrolled
in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) on
the GI Bill, earning his BS in chemical engineering in 1959.
Influenced by his undergraduate research with John Quinn,
he went on to pursue his PhD in chemical engineering at
the University of Minnesota, where he worked with Neal
Amundson. Ever in a hurry, he defended his PhD after just
three years, in 1962, and joined the UIUC chemical engineer-
ing faculty that same year.
Roger’s major research contributions were in the experi-
mental observation of complex behavior in chemical reactions
and catalysis. His work with Amundson involved theoreti-
cal predictions of mathematically very rich steady-state and
371

dynamic behavior in chemical reactors. Roger and his 29 PhD

and 37 MS students were the first to verify theoretical predic-
tions of such complex behavior experimentally. He was the first
to show multiple steady states in a stirred tank reactor and to
demonstrate chaos in chemical reactions. His demonstration
that multiplicities and instabilities in chemically reacting sys-
tems were real issues, not just theoretical ones, is the core of
Roger’s research contributions.
Major awards for his research include a Guggenheim
Fellowship (1968–1969), which he spent at CalTech and
the University of Southern California; the Allan P. Colburn
Award for Excellence in Publication by a Young Member of
the Institute (1970) and the R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical
Reaction Engineering (1981), both from the American Institute
of Chemical Engineers; and, of course, election to the National
Academy of Engineering (1984).
But his contributions to engineering go well beyond his
research. In 1979 he moved to the University of Notre Dame as
chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and ushered
in a fundamental transformation of the department. After
only two years he became dean of the College of Engineering,
where that same transformative energy impacted the rest of
the college. And in 1987 he became vice president and associ-
ate provost of the university.
Roger was an early adopter of computing in chemical engi-
neering, both for research and for undergraduate instruction,
at a time when you had to do everything yourself, including
writing code in machine language. He received the American
Society for Engineering Education George Westinghouse Award
in 1977 for the establishment of a computerized dynamics and
digital control laboratory at the University of Illinois, the first of
its kind nationally for undergraduates in chemical engineering.
At Notre Dame, he started a large-scale deployment of
campuswide computing resources in 1985, providing state-of-
the-art Unix workstations for engineering and science faculty
and students, graduate and undergraduate alike. This created
some of the best computing infrastructure in the nation, as
well as a culture change in the way many classes were taught.

ROGER A. SCHMITZ 373
In 1995 Roger returned to the department to teach a new

course, for which he wrote an electronic textbook titled
Ecological Models and Dynamics: An Interactive Textbook (Garland
Science, 2008). He had always seen the mathematical connec-
tion between dynamic behavior in a diverse range of natu-
ral phenomena, from chemical reactions to heart fibrillations
and predator-prey behavior. This course, still taught at Notre
Dame, is an elegant exposition of that understanding.
Roger was an avid athlete. If he hadn’t been a chemical
engineer, he surely would have been a baseball player. He
was also a formidable opponent on the handball court and
he loved running. But his pride and joy was his family. He
married Ruth Kuhl in 1957 when he was an undergraduate at
Illinois, and they had three wonderful daughters and seven
grandchildren. Nothing was better than when he could com-
bine his family with his passion for running, as in 2005, when
three generations of his family placed first in their divisions at
the annual Sunburst race in South Bend.
It is impossible to describe Roger’s career and contribu-
tions to our profession without the one word that describes
him best—integrity. Scientific integrity: Roger designed and
performed the most elegant experiments with care and curi-
osity. Professional integrity: Roger treated everyone with the
utmost in honesty and fairness. He was the one that everyone
went to for advice and counsel. Above all else, Roger could be
trusted to tell you the truth. Personal integrity: Roger was the
model of decency. This showed through his family and in all
his interpersonal relationships. He battled ALS with courage,
dignity, and humor. A visit with Ruth and Roger in his final
weeks was nothing less than inspiring.
Roger A. Schmitz is the experimental verification of the theo-
retical prediction that good guys can finish first.


OLEG D. SHERBY
1925–2015
Elected in 1979
“Research to improve the understanding of high-temperature deformation

of metals and technical materials leading to their improved performance.”
BY JEFFREY WADSWORTH AND WILLIAM D. NIX
OLEG DIMITRI SHERBY, a pioneer in the high-temperature

deformation of complex materials, died at his home in Menlo
Park on November 9, 2015, at age 90. He was an emeritus pro-
fessor at Stanford University in the Department of Materials
Science and Engineering.
He was born in Shanghai on February 9, 1925. His parents
had earlier fled Vladivostok to escape the impending com-
munist Russian Revolution—in 1923 his father had walked
200 miles to reach a railroad station in China so he could be
reunited with his wife in Shanghai. Oleg had vivid memories
of being raised there, and in the 1980s revisited the apartment
where he had lived.
When he was 13 the family again moved, this time to avoid
the Japanese bombing of Shanghai, and came to the United
States, where they settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Oleg attended the University of California at Berkeley to
study chemical metallurgy. His undergraduate studies were
interrupted for military service in the Infantry and Corps of
Engineers in 1944, and he was honorably discharged in 1946.
He returned to Berkeley, changed his major to physical metal-
lurgy, and went on to earn undergraduate and PhD degrees.
375

At a Berkeley dance in 1948 he met Juanita Slater. They wed

the following year and were happily married for 40 years until
Juanita’s death in 1989. Together they raised four children.
Oleg was a research metallurgist at the UC Institute of
Engineering Research from 1949 to 1956, working closely with
his PhD advisor John Dorn (after Dorn’s death, Oleg referred
to him as the “late, great John Dorn”).
In 1956 he was awarded a National Science Foundation
Fellowship to study at Sheffield University and spent the fol-
lowing year as scientific liaison officer in metallurgy with the
US Office of Naval Research in London. At this stage he had
already published significant work, and senior Sheffield pro-
fessors were confident that in the future he would deserve
an earned doctorate of metallurgy from the university for
published work. To be presented for this doctorate requires
a Sheffield degree, so he was asked to submit his one year of
work at Sheffield as a master’s thesis. He did so, and it is still
considered both the shortest and best master’s thesis in the
department’s history. As Oleg liked to relate, when he returned
to Berkeley John Dorn was not at all pleased, pointing out that
it looked like a master’s at Sheffield was an advance on the
PhD from Berkeley.
Oleg joined the Stanford faculty in 1958 as an associate pro-
fessor of metallurgical engineering with a joint appointment in
aeronautical engineering. He was promoted to full professor
in 1962, a position he held until 1988, when he decided to take
professor emeritus status to tend to his ailing wife. He never
stopped working, however, remaining actively involved with
a number of his colleagues and publishing research up to the
time of his passing.
His early reputation was built on his discovery of the inti-
mate relation between lattice self-diffusion (the movements of
individual atoms) and high-temperature deformation of crys-
talline materials. Until then, the important problem of creep—
the slow deformation of metals at high temperatures—had
received much attention because of its relevance for gas turbine
engines, nuclear reactors, and other generating systems. But
the atomic processes controlling creep had not been identified.

OLEG D. SHERBY 377
In the early 1950s, as a research engineer at UC Berkeley

with Dorn, Oleg began to draw correlations between the rate
of high-temperature creep of different metals and the rate of
self-diffusion in those metals. He soon discovered that for a
wide variety of metals the rate of creep could be accurately
predicted with knowledge of the self-diffusion and a few other
physical properties. It was only after this that theorists started
to catch up and identify the microscopic reasons for the cor-
relations that Oleg had found. By the mid-1960s he had devel-
oped a complete phenomenology for high-temperature creep
of metals that served not only as a guide for designing heat-
resisting alloys but also as a solid body of facts about high-
temperature creep to which modern theories must conform.
He was a master at developing phenomenological rela-
tions among physical properties of materials. He may have
been inspired by Trouton’s rule, a phenomenological rule stat-
ing that the entropy of vaporization for all liquids is nearly
the same at their boiling points. His findings that the rate of
steady-state creep of metals is directly proportional to the rate
of lattice self-diffusion, and that seemingly unrelated proper-
ties such as high-temperature strength of metals could be pre-
dicted accurately from a knowledge of atomic self-diffusion,
are examples of his mastery of phenomenology.
He was fond of saying that he had found “all the data in
the world” in reaching his conclusions. Indeed, by finding
“all the data” he was able to develop his impressive account
of high-temperature creep of metals that has stood the test of
time and has led to the development of new alloys.
In the late 1960s he was one of the first to explore the phe-
nomenon of superplasticity, the ability of some metallic alloys
to be stretched several times their initial lengths without break-
ing or, as Oleg would say, “like well-chewed chewing gum.”
He showed how these properties could be used in metal form-
ing and was soon leading that field by identifying the various
ways that alloys could be made superplastic.
A race began to demonstrate this property in steel. Oleg
determined that superplasticity could be developed in steel
by raising the carbon content to very high levels where

conventional wisdom held that such compositions were

impractical. The steel families he developed, now called
ultra-high-carbon steels, not only could be made superplastic,
and thus formable by the right kind of processing, but also
had remarkable room-temperature strength and ductility.
His work on superplasticity extended to certain ceramic
materials, which are often assumed to be completely brittle,
and his work on ultra-high-carbon steels revealed that they had
similar compositions to the famous steel swords of Damascus.
This in turn led to a rediscovery of how the ancient patterns
on the swords were made and stimulated research into other
ancient laminated steels and their similarity to contemporary
materials. This aspect of Oleg’s work was described in a 1981
New York Times article that described how the Stanford team’s
modern methods produced the same carbon-rich steel used
during the Crusades. As Times science writer Walter Sullivan
wrote, “Swords of this metal could split a feather in midair, yet
retain their edge through many a battle.”
Oleg was the coholder of eight US patents; author or
coauthor of 340 publications on mechanical behavior, materials
processing, and diffusion in materials and metal-laminated
composites; coauthor of a text on superplasticity in metals
and ceramics; and technical editor of two books. His 1968
paper, “Mechanical Behavior of Crystalline Solids at Elevated
Temperature,” coauthored with Peter M. Burke and published
in Progress in Materials Science (vol. 13, pp. 325–390), was
declared a Citation Classic in Current Contents (April 19, 1987).
He received numerous awards and distinctions during
his career: NSF fellow (1956–1957); Charles B. Dudley Medal
of the American Society for Testing and Materials (1958);
Senior NSF Fellowship at the Centre d’Études Nucléaires
de Saclay, France (1967); earned doctorate, D.Met., Sheffield
University (1968); fellow, ASM International (1970); first John
E. Dorn Memorial Lecturer, Northwestern University (1970);
Centenary Medal of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (1980); fellow, American Institute of Mining and
Metallurgical Engineers (1985); Charles S. Barrett Silver
Medal of the ASM Rocky Mountain Chapter (1987); honorary

OLEG D. SHERBY 379
member, Japan Institute of Metals (1996) and Iron and Steel

Institute of Japan (1999); ASM Gold Medal (considered ASM’s
highest annual award) (1985); Yukawa Silver Medal (1988 and
1999); ASM Albert Easton White Distinguished Teacher Award
(1988), Campbell Memorial Lecture Award (1998), and Albert
Sauveur Achievement Award (2000); Lifetime Achievement
Award in Superplasticity (2000) presented by the International
Conference on Superplasticity in Advanced Materials; and
Thermec 2000 Distinguished Award.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in
1979, and from 1983 to 2003 served on committees on light-
weight materials for 21st century trucks, Office of Naval
Research opportunities in materials science, and hydrofracture
techniques for the disposal of radioactive waste.
Throughout his life Oleg supported young people, helping
them to develop their own careers, and he is remembered by
his colleagues as a superb teacher. He taught undergraduate
and graduate courses in metallurgy and materials science and
supervised 40 students for their PhD at Stanford and an addi-
tional 21 master’s research thesis students. He was a mentor to
15 postdoctoral fellows and visiting scholars.
The enthusiasm he exuded in his dealings with people came
through in his teaching and his students appreciated that. He
once thought that his teaching scores were better if he wore a
tie, so he regularly wore a tie when he taught. But it was not
the tie: it was his warm, enthusiastic personality that made
him exceptional.
Oleg was also passionate about sports and athletics, having
competed successfully in middle distance running as a young
man. He ran track and played soccer at Berkeley—and noted
that he combined these skills in one particular soccer game
when a fight broke out among the players. He organized
noon volleyball games for Stanford faculty and students alike,
getting everyone out to the volleyball court at least twice a
week. Even distinguished international visitors to the depart-
ment were encouraged to join in, so that the rosters included
some of the who’s who of materials science. He continued
this vigorous activity well into his 50s. In addition, he was an

enthusiastic and frequent participant in after-work ping-pong

games that students organized in the department. Colleagues
also remember him as someone who enjoyed an occasional
poker party.
Anyone who met Oleg will remember his joie de vivre. He
was the most enthusiastic, positive, and upbeat person many
of us will ever meet. He was always excited about the work he
and his students were doing, and never boasted about some-
thing he had done. It is what made him such a wonderful
colleague.
Oleg is survived by his four children—Lawrence and Pamela
of Palo Alto, Stephen of Roseville, and Mark of San Jose—and
by nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He was
followed in death by his second partner, Marilyn Kazimi, and
they are survived by her daughter, Leila, of Roseville, and her
two children.
He was a great man and is deeply missed by all who were
fortunate enough to have known him.



JOEL S. SPIRA
1927–2015
Elected in 1994
“For integrating semiconductor technology to lighting

products, creating an internationally competitive company,
and for continuing work with engineering education.”
BY STEPHEN DIRECTOR AND JOEL MOSES
J OEL SOLON SPIRA, a prodigious innovator who changed

the way we illuminate our homes by inventing the first
solid state electronic dimmer, and founded and built Lutron
Electronics Co., Inc. into a global company selling a wide array
of lighting controls, passed away at his home on April 8, 2015,
at age 88.
Spira, who was chairman, founder, and director of research,
started Lutron in 1961 with his wife Ruth in a spare bedroom
of their apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He
used his extraordinary talent for tinkering, engineering, and
business to transform the small firm into a highly respected
worldwide brand.
Joel was born in New York City on March 1, 1927, to Elias
and Edna Spira. After proudly serving in the US Navy from
1944 to 1946, he attended Purdue University and earned a
bachelor of science degree in physics in 1948.
At first, he worked for a defense contractor on projects that
ultimately led him to think about lighting control—ideas
that led to the commercialization of the dimmer for house-
hold use. The Capri dimmer was introduced in the early 1960s
with ads suggesting that it could enhance the ambiance of a
room by “dialing romance.” Today, Lutron makes some 14,000
products that can be found in over 100 countries in residences,
383

palaces, universities, hotels, museums, and offices, including

the Empire State Building.
Joel and Ruth moved the company to Coopersburg, in the
Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. Even as Lutron
grew into a global company, with sales in more than 100 coun-
tries, he continued to run the business with a personal touch.
He treated employees like members of his extended family
and took time to know people on a personal level.
Lutron was built on and still follows five company prin-
ciples, by which Joel himself lived: 1. Take care of the customer
with superior goods and services. 2. Take care of the com-
pany. 3. Take care of the people. 4. Innovate with high-quality
products. 5. Deliver value to the customer.
Always looking at things with a “what could be” instead of
a “what is” attitude, Joel’s true passion was coming up with
new inventions and creative ways of looking at things. He
sweated the details, and was committed to precise, dogged
attention to the highest quality standards. He didn’t just create
something for his own sake or for the money—he wanted to
create wealth in society and deliver value. He will be remem-
bered as an entrepreneur and took great pride in everything
he did, from working on the early stages of an engineering
project, to creating and growing a global business.
Insatiably curious and inquisitive, he was the holder of
more than 300 US patents, and under his guidance Lutron
expanded its product line from basic, utilitarian dimmer
switches to highly advanced and high-tech lighting controls
and home automation systems.
Joel led Lutron for 54 years. He also created a company
called Subarashii Kudamono (“Wonderful Fruit” in Japanese),
a grower and marketer of unique Asian pears, after being
introduced to the fruit during his business travels to the Far
East.
In 2010 Joel’s accomplishments, inventions, and prominent
role in helping develop an entirely new industry dedicated
to lighting control were honored when items from Lutron’s
50-year history, including Joel’s first engineering notebook,
product prototypes, and early advertising materials, were

JOEL S. SPIRA 385
donated to the Electricity Collection of the Smithsonian

National Museum of Natural History.
He served on a number of advisory boards and councils,
and he and Ruth supported education by funding the Ruth
and Joel Spira Excellence in Teaching Awards at Carnegie
Mellon University, Cornell University, Georgia Institute of
Technology, Lehigh University, MIT, Muhlenberg College,
Ohio State University, Penn State University, the University of
Michigan, the University of Notre Dame, and his own Purdue
University. He was a member of the National Academy of
Engineering, and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Joel always took time out to do even the smallest things for
his community, his company, and his family. He was a con-
tributor to the arts, health care, and education and he was a
proud and generous member of Congregation Keneseth Israel
of Allentown.
He loved his family and treasured his time with each family
member. Wednesday movie night with Ruth was a sacred
tradition. He also took tremendous pleasure in the whimsical,
such as his watch collection, birdwatching, and his penchant
for colorful outfits.
Joel will be remembered as a wonderful, loving husband,
father, and grandfather. He is survived by his beloved wife,
Ruth Rodale Spira, to whom he was married for 60 years; his
sister Miriam Spira Poser; daughters Susan Spira Hakkarainen
(husband Pekka Hakkarainen), Lily Spira Housler (hus-
band Ryan Housler), and Juno Spira; and grandsons Ari
Hakkarainen, Max Hakkarainen, and Bailey Malanczuk.


JIN WU
1934–2008
Elected in 1995
“For advancing knowledge of the air-sea interface through experiments

with applications to remote sensing and the environment.”
BY MARSHALL P. TULIN
JIN WU, a well-known engineering educator and experi

mental scientist specializing in air-sea interactions and the
small-scale structure of the sea surface, died January 14, 2008,
at age 74 in Tainan, Taiwan.
He was born in Nanjing, China, on April 9, 1934. In 1956 he
graduated with a degree in civil engineering from National
Cheng Kung University in Tainan, one of Taiwan’s largest
and most important engineering schools, and later served as
its president (1994–1998). He was also Taiwan’s Minister of
Education (1996–1998) before returning to teaching at Cheng
Kung, where he retired in 2004.
Professor Wu spent the largest part of his engineering life
in the United States, beginning with graduate work (MS 1961,
PhD 1964) at the University of Iowa’s Hydraulic Research
Institute, then led by the well-known engineering educator
Hunter Rouse. His doctoral research, under the supervision of
Louis Landweber, was an experimental validation of Tulin’s
wake survey method for the measurement of the viscous resis-
tance of ship hulls.
Upon completing his studies, Jin began a career as a research
scientist at Hydronautics, Inc., where he initiated a variety of
laboratory studies of hydrodynamic phenomena, many in
collaboration with the author. These included wake collapse
387

and internal wave generation in stratified media, drag reduc-

tion and turbulent diffusion in polymer solution flows, wave-
current interactions, pollutant dispersion in streams, turbulent
vortex pairs, wind stress, sea surface roughness, and air-sea
interactions. The experimental studies of wave-current and
wind-sea interactions were carried out in a 40-ft-long wind-
wave tank that he built, the first large facility of its kind in the
United States, accompanied by a variety of innovative instru-
mentation for the observation and measurement of the wind-
generated sea surface.
In 1974 he began research and teaching in marine s tudies
and civil engineering at the University of Delaware (at
Newark) and eventually at a new marine site in Lewes, where
he built the Air-Sea Interaction Laboratory. This important
structure featured a large, advanced wind-wave tank in which
he extended his earlier studies of the air-sea interaction to
the atmospheric boundary layer, wave breaking, whitecaps,
spray, surface films, bubbles, aerosols, sea salt, heat and mass
transfer at the surface, rain-wave interactions, radar returns,
and remote sensing of the sea surface.
Professor Wu played a major role in the development of
marine studies and research at the University of Delaware,
especially at Lewes, from which he retired as the H. Fletcher
Brown Professor of Marine Studies and Civil Engineering.
He wrote and published extensively. His last publication,
his 136th, was an article on “Small-Scale Wave Breaking: A
Widespread Sea Surface Phenomenon and Its Consequence
for Air-Sea Exchanges” (Journal of Physical Oceanography 25:3,
March 1995).
His research at both Hydronautics and the University of
Delaware had long been of great interest to, and supported by,
the US Navy, and in 1991 he was appointed an Ocean Science
Educator by the Office of Naval Research.
Throughout his life he maintained a close and support-
ive relationship with his alma mater, National Cheng Kung
University, and in 1994 he returned there as its president.
Higher education had always been heavily supported by the

JIN WU 389
national government, and during his term Cheng Kung con-

tinued the expansion of its large engineering campus.
In 1996 he was appointed Taiwan’s Minister of Education.
In this role, he said, he “had tried to create an educational
system that would provide young people with many choices
and hope.” Too, he had favored, controversially, increased
interchanges between Mainland and Taiwanese students.
In 1998 he returned to teach at Cheng Kung until he retired
in 2004, after which he divided his time between Taiwan and
his home in Rockville, Maryland. In his retirement he became
fascinated with the life and world-spanning marine voyages
of the early Chinese Admiral Zheng and was a visiting scholar
at the Library of Congress at the time of his death. He was also
in the midst of helping China’s Hong Zhou University plan a
large hydrodynamics laboratory.
He served on many advisory committees here and abroad.
He is survived by his wife Tzu-Chen of Thousand Oaks,
California; sons Victor Hua-Teh Wu also of Thousand
Oaks, Abraham Hua-Chung Wu of Los Angeles, and Marvin
Hua-Wei Wu of Chapel Hill; brothers Hai Wu of Shanghai and
Yu Wu of Taipei; and four grandchildren. He and Tzu-Chen
passed their interests in science, education, politics, history,
and sports on to their children and grandchildren.


APPENDIX
Members Elected Born Deceased
Harold M. Agnew 1976 3/28/1921 9/29/2013

Harl P. Aldrich, Jr. 1984 6/21/1923 11/24/2014
Wm. Howard Arnold 1974 5/13/1931 7/16/2015
David Atlas 1986 5/25/1924 11/10/2015
Howard K. Birnbaum 1988 10/18/1932 1/23/2005
John A. Blume 1969 4/8/1909 3/1/2002
Stuart W. Churchill 1974 6/13/1920 3/24/2016
Wesley A. Clark 1999 4/10/1927 2/22/2016
William A. Clevenger 1990 9/12/1919 7/9/2009
Thomas B. Cook, Jr. 1981 8/28/1926 12/27/2013
J. Barry Cooke 1979 4/28/1915 4/21/2005
Alan Cottrell 1976 7/17/1919 2/15/2012
John P. Craven 1970 10/30/1924 2/12/2015
Charles Crussard 1976 6/24/1916 1/14/2008
Robert G. Dean 1980 11/1/1930 2/28/2015
Thomas F. Donohue 1994 8/24/1930 10/25/2014
Brian L. Eyre 2009 11/29/1933 7/28/2014
James L. Flanagan 1978 8/26/1925 8/25/2015
Robert L. Fleischer 1993 7/8/1930 3/3/2011
Renato Fuchs 1994 11/24/1942 9/7/2015
John H. Gibbons 1994 1/15/1929 7/17/2015
Andrew S. Grove 1979 9/2/1936 3/21/2016
George H. Heilmeier 1979 5/22/1936 4/21/2014
David G. Hoag 1979 10/11/1925 1/19/2015
John H. Horlock 1988 4/19/1928 5/22/2015
Rik Huiskes 2005 12/18/1944 12/24/2010
James D. Idol, Jr. 1986 8/7/1928 7/15/2015
Donald G. Iselin 1980 9/5/1922 3/9/2012
J. Donovan Jacobs 1969 12/24/1908 8/26/2000
Mujid S. Kazimi 2012 11/20/1947 7/1/2015
Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf 1994 2/15/1922 3/25/2010
Walter B. LaBerge 1987 3/29/1924 7/16/2004
William J. LeMessurier 1978 6/12/1926 6/14/2007
Thomas M. Leps 1973 12/3/1914 4/23/2010
John L. Lumley 1991 11/4/1930 5/30/2015
continued next page
391

Members Elected Born Deceased
Douglas C. MacMillan 1967 7/15/1912 10/26/2001

Charles E. Massonnet 1978 3/14/1914 4/4/1996
Hudson Matlock 1982 12/9/1919 10/8/2015
Walter G. May 1978 11/28/1918 2/18/2015
James W. Mayer 1984 4/24/1930 6/14/2013
Bramlette McClelland 1979 12/16/1920 4/14/2010
Edward J. McCluskey 1998 10/16/1929 2/13/2016
Douglas C. Moorhouse 1982 2/24/1926 3/14/2012
John W. Morris 1979 9/10/1921 8/20/2013
George E. Mueller 1967 7/16/1918 10/12/2015
Haydn H. Murray 2003 8/31/1924 2/4/2015
Gerald Nadler 1986 3/12/1924 7/28/2014
F. Robert Naka 1997 7/18/1923 12/21/2013
Gerald T. Orlob 1992 7/4/1924 3/23/2015
Yih-Hsing Pao 1985 1/19/1930 6/18/2013
Eugene J. Peltier 1979 3/28/1910 2/13/2004
Courtland D. Perkins 1969 12/27/1912 1/6/2008
Egor P. Popov 1976 2/6/1913 4/19/2001
William N. Poundstone 1977 8/12/1925 7/3/2015
Simon Ramo 1964 5/7/1913 6/27/2016
Norman C. Rasmussen 1977 11/12/1927 7/18/2003
Eugene M. Rasmusson 1999 2/27/1929 3/22/2015
Denis Rooke 1987 4/2/1924 9/2/2008
Steven B. Sample 1998 11/29/1940 3/29/2016
Roger A. Schmitz 1984 10/22/1934 10/11/2013
Oleg D. Sherby 1979 2/9/1925 11/9/2015
Joel S. Spira 1994 3/1/1927 4/8/2015
Jin Wu 1995 4/9/1934 1/14/2008

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HARL P. ALDRICH, JR., 9

WM. HOWARD ARNOLD, 15

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

THOMAS B. COOK, JR., 61

THOMAS F. DONOHUE, 101

BRIAN L. EYRE, 105

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

JAMES L. FLANAGAN, 109

ROBERT L. FLEISCHER, 119

RENATO FUCHS, 127

JOHN H. (JACK) GIBBONS, 133

ANDREW S. GROVE, 141

GEORGE H. HEILMEIER, 149

DAVID G. HOAG, 157

JOHN H. HORLOCK, 163

RIK HUISKES, 169

JAMES D. IDOL, JR., 173

DONALD G. ISELIN, 179

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

J. DONOVAN JACOBS, 183

MUJID S. KAZIMI, 189

DORIS KUHLMANN-WILSDORF, 193

WALTER B. LaBERGE, 197

WILLIAM J. LeMESSURIER, 205

THOMAS M. LEPS, 211

JOHN L. LUMLEY, 217

DOUGLAS C. MacMILLAN, 223

CHARLES E. MASSONNET, 227

HUDSON MATLOCK, 233

WALTER G. MAY, 239

JAMES W. MAYER, 245

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

BRAMLETTE McCLELLAND, 249

EDWARD J. McCLUSKEY, 255

DOUGLAS C. MOORHOUSE, 259

JOHN W. MORRIS, 265

GEORGE E. MUELLER, 271

HAYDN H. MURRAY, 277

GERALD NADLER, 283

F. ROBERT NAKA, 287

Adapted and reprinted with the permission of the American Meteo