In Memoriam

In 1936, the late Olaf Hougen spent a year as visiting professor at the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology). It was as a result of Hougen's inspirational teaching at Armour that several students decided to come to Wisconsin for graduate studies with the much-admired pro-fessor. Two of those students, Bernie Gamson and George Thodos, passed away this year.

• Bernard W. Gamson (PhD 1943), former president and CEO of Martin Marietta Aluminum Co. and vice president of Martin Marietta Corp., died in April. Even before receiving his PhD, Bernie worked as a development engineer with Mobil Oil of New Jersey. During World War II, he worked for the War Production Board on classified projects, and then as chief process engineer and director of R&D at Great Lakes Carbon Corporation for 11 years. He also served as manager of the Nuclear Fuel Department for the KAPL Division of General Electric in New York, where he participated in the development of nuclear propulsion systems for the U.S. submarine fleet. As director of research and vice president of Borg-Warner, Bernie pioneered the use of magnetic resonance imaging in oil-well exploration. He joined Harvey Aluminum Company in the 1960s before its acquisition by Martin Marietta. After retiring in 1983, Bernie served as a consultant to the aerospace, aluminum, petrochemical, medical and other high-technology industries.
• George Thodos (PhD 1943), emeritus professor of chemical engineering at Northwestern University, died last February. During World War II, George worked with other researchers to improve the processes for production of synthetic rubber. George joined the faculty at Northwestern's Robert P. McCormick School of Engineering in 1947. There he was a dedicated and respected teacher. He served as chair of the department from 1960 to 1964. In 1963 he was named to the prestigious Walter P. Murphy Distinguished Professorship. He retired in 1986. Over the course of his career, he published more than 275 technical papers and was awarded seven patents. His research included heat and mass transfer, thermodynamic and transport properties, and solar energy utilization.

Morton Smutz (PhD 1950), who studied with the late Bob Marshall, had an interesting and varied career that took him first to Bucknell University and then to a faculty position at Iowa State. In 1955, the dean of engineering at Iowa State selected young Morton rather than an external candidate to serve as head of the Department of Chemical and Mining Engineering. When Morton wrote to Olaf Hougen informing him of the appointment, he noted modestly, "As my wife puts it, `the dean must have run out of stamps.'" While at Iowa State, he also served as deputy director of the Atomic Energy Commission's Ames Lab. In 1969, he was appointed as associate dean for research in the College of Engineering at the University of Florida. In 1979, he moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue his interest in ocean engineering with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Morton retired in 1984 and passed away in May of this year.

Gerald C. Pomraning (BS, 1957), professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA and co-founder of the San Diego-based Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), died in February of this year. Jerry received his PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT in 1962 and worked in industrial research at the General Electric and General Atomic companies until 1969 when he and two colleagues founded SAIC, which is now a diversified, high-technology research and engineering firm with over 35,000 employees. Jerry won many awards, including election to the American Associ-ation for the Advancement of Science in 1986, and in 1994, the College of Engineering's Distinguished Service Award for his contributions to nuclear reactor physics, transport theory and radiative transfer.