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It is with great sadness that we inform our readers of the recent death of Professor Robert L. Pigford. He was the founding editor of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Fundamentals and served in that capacity for 25 years until the three I&EC Quarterlies were combined to form Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Professor Pigford shaped the nature of the Fundamentals Quarterly and established a tradition of excellence that the current editors strive to continue. Professor Pigford left many other legacies to the profession of chemical engineering, as mentioned in the following obituary prepared by one of his colleagues. Donald R. Paul Editor
In Memory of Robert L. Pigford April 16,1917-August 4,1988 Professor Robert L. Pigford, University Research Professor and Delaware’s preeminent scholar, died on August 4 after suffering a stroke on May 14, from which he never recovered. He was 71 years old and a long-time resident of Newark. He was born and raised in Meridian, MI. He earned a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Mississippi State College in 1938, an M.S. degree from the University of Illinois, and in 1941 a Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois. His next 6 years were spent in the Engineering Research Laboratory at Du Pont Experimental Station, working on both civilian and military research problems, the latter arising from World War 11. With his industrial colleagues, he participated in what was to become one of the national centers for renaissance in engineering education, in which the group replaced approximate analyses guided by experiment with careful, quantitative models of the chemical and physical processes being considered. Dr. Pigford’s association with the University of Delaware began shortly after his arrival in Delaware, when he began organizing these new analyses into evening and weekend courses for chemical engineering students on the campus. One result of this activity was a textbook, Application of Differential Equations to Chemical Engineering Problems, that he coauthored with the late W. R. Marshall, also of Du Pont and later to become Professor and Dean of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. In 1947, Allan
Colburn prevailed upon Dr. Pigford to come to the University on a full-time basis as chairman, at age 30, of a fledgling Department of Chemical Engineering, a department that was to develop rapidly in the coming decades under his tutelage and leadership to become a preeminent department nationally. His association with the University of Delaware was to span more than 30 years until his retirement in 1987. From 1966 to 1975, Dr. Pigford served as Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Long an outspoken advocate for the combination of engineering science with the art of engineering as practiced industrially, Professor Pigford was a dedicated educator who had an impact on the engineering profession worldwide-through his exemplary books, lectures, and research papers and through the activities of a large corp of former students who came to Delaware to work and study with him, including those who subsequently became leaders of the chemical engineering profession in Europe and in Japan. He was one of the earliest proponents of the use of computers in engineering and built several for both instruction and research before the widespread availability of such machines. His colleagues remember the numerous hurdles he had to overcome, frequently in humorously unorthodox manners, to convince conservative adminis-
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trators of the need not only for these expensive new tools of science and technology but also for the carefully airconditioned rooms which they required, in an era when such luxuries were entirely unavailable to campus personnel. His early interests in constructing electronic computers led also to the assembly of several hi-fi units and radios. He was an avid ham radio operator. His advice was sought by numerous industrial, academic, and governmental institutions. He served as a member of the US Army’s Advisory Council, the Scientific Advisory Board of the US Air Force, the Department of Energy, and the National Research Council, as well as serving as a member of the Advisory Committees for Chemical Engineering at Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received virtually all the national awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and served as the Director of that organization from 1963 to 1966. In 1983, on the occasion of that organization’s 75th anniversary, he was named as one of 30 preeminent leaders of his profession. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1971 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972. In 1977, the University of Delaware named Professor Pigford as its first Alison Scholar in recognition of his exemplary contribu-
tions to this institution, and in 1983 he was appointed to the University’s Board of Trustees. He was a tireless and effective proponent of excellence in education, and the university’s growth in stature since 1947 owes much to his insistence on quality, integrity, and the need for a close partnership between professional growth and personal ethical and moral development. In addition to serving on numerous editorial advisory boards, he served as editor of the America1 Chemical Society journal, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Fundamentals, for a full quarter century. The Delaware Association of Professional Engineers named him Engineer-of-the-Year in 1988. Professor Pigford married Marian Pinkston in 1939. Their daughter, Nancy, is a resident of Philadelphia and their son, Robert, lives in Newark, DE. There are three grandsons. He is survived also by a brother, Thomas, Berkeley, CA, and a sister, Mary Smyser, Oak Ridge, TN. A memorial service was held at the Newark Methodist Church, where Professor Pigford was a long-time member, on August 9. Memorial contributions will be used for the R. L. Pigford Scholarships and Fellowships Fund which supports graduate and undergraduate scholarships at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Delaware.
