Biographical Memoirs Volume 65 (1994) / Chapter Skim
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14. Robert L. Pigford
14. Robert L. Pigford
Pages 274-289
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From page 275... ...
Born and raised in Meridian, Mississippi, he was encouragect to excel in whatever he undertook. Early interests embraced the emerging marvels of raclio as well as musicinterests never fully set aside, even though the chairman of the chemistry department at his undergraduate school, Mississippi State College, swayer!
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From page 276... ...
Here he encountered the professional invigoration of a host of very able colleagues, of the laboratory director, Thomas H Chilton, and of numerous consultants who visited regularly, inclucling AlIan P
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From page 277... ...
· Measurements of the atmospheric dispersion rates of droplet clouds, of interest in both defensive and offensive chemical warfare cluring World War IT, were carried out using balloons to carry the experiments aloft. This tell to one of his most celebrated mishaps, when a large balloon carrying harmless simulants broke loose and drifted across the river to New Jersey.
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From page 278... ...
Some of those enrolled were full-time graduate stuclents, but most were industrial colleagues interested in strengthening their professional backgrounds through formal associations with this unique scholar. Chemical engineers in the Delaware Valley soon Earned that this university's Saturday morning extension courses were occasions for intense and warm professional socializing as well as for vigorous scholarship, as young, full-time students and experienced professionals wrestled together to master the apparently unending store of intellectual challenges which Robert Pi~forcl ant!
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From page 279... ...
Robert Pigford consulted his industrial friends and supervisors about the wisdom of such a move; their response was to advise him to make a two-column listing of the objective advantages under each career alternative. Of course, they were confident that a continuing productive career in the nation's leading chemical company would appear much more attractive than the alternative of work in a fledgling department in an underdeveloped university with no Ph.D.
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From page 280... ...
All faculty offices, in those long ago clays in Brown Laboratory, were along one corridor, with the chairman's at one end and the most recently appointed assistant professor at the other. Robert Pigfor(1 simply gathered any papers necessary for a discussion of the issue in one hanc!
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From page 281... ...
At the time, one of the modern subjects for attack by extensive numerical calculations was that of mass transfer accompanied by chemical reaction. While empirical correlations, restricted to very specific chemical systems, had been available for some time, there was little scientific material of any generality.
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From page 282... ...
The interstate highway network hacl not yet been develope(l, and the thirty-five miles separating Abercleen and Newark were on roadways shared with cruising teen-agers on the evening trip to Aberdeen and with sleepy Tong-clistance truck drivers on the return. Those of us who were early risers viewed our rumpled and bleary-eyed colleagues when they returned to the Delaware campus at about the time other people go to work.
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From page 283... ...
a lasting influence in bringing the department into the computer age more rapicIly than would have otherwise been the case. During his years at Berkeley Professor Pigford pursued a vigorous program of teaching and research.
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From page 284... ...
patent jointly with his graduate students Burke Baker Ill and Dwain Blum for this process, named "cycling zone adsorption." His research typically involved difficult problems which were in need of experimental insight anti theoretical analysis, and also hacl promise of contributing to industrial practice. Professor Pigforct enjoyocl teaching at all levels.
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From page 285... ...
And, in view of his earlier service on athletic boards, it was difficult for his Berkeley colleagues to accept his preference for a university having a blue hen as a mascot over that of a handsome golden bear! In addition to creating new knowledge by research, throughout his career Professor Pigford contributed much to the chemical engineering literature, including books and numerous papers in technical journals.
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From page 286... ...
served much time on national committees devoted to clean air standards and to the safe disposal of nuclear wastes. In this latter activity he worked closely with his younger brother Thomas, a clistinguishec!
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From page 287... ...
On an occasion when the Pigford department was being regaled by a visiting seminar speaker who cIaimecl he coup decrease the diameter of these wires by an order of magnitude from the best then available, his assertion was met with great disbelief by the graduate student body, many of whom had struggled valiantly to attain far more modest gains. The speaker stood his ground, however, against an increasingly hostile onslaught of skeptical queries, claiming that 0.l micron wires would be produced in his laboratory "within days," and mounted in the anemometer by simple "hoIct-it-in-your-fingers-anct-solder-it" techniques.
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From page 288... ...
One former graduate student recalls receiving a Saturciay midnight call from a colleague in the laboratory acivising that a considerable flow of water was cascading into the basement below Professor Pigford's office. Could its source possibly be in your laboratory just above the office?
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From page 289... ...
The visitors to the Pigford home were a part of the extended Pigford family, and, as such, their needs took precedence over any earlier plans for the evening. Another story with which to close: a new student had been assigned to share a laboratory with another of Pigford's graduate students—the late Robert H
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