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ROBERT L. PIGFORD
1 91 7-1 988
BY ARTHUR B. METZNER
ROBERT L. PIGFORD died on August 4, ~ 98S, after suffer-
ing a stroke on May 14. His strength had previously been
severely sapped by a heart attack in June 1987, but he had
worked diligently to revitalize his physical vigor after that
event and he continued to serve his university with enthusiasm
as a senior colleague, a trustee, and our preeminent scholar.
Robert Pigford was born and raised in Meridian, Missis-
sippi. He received a B.S. clegree in chemical engineering
from Mississippi State College in 1938 and his M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois in 1940 and
1942, respectively. Robert and Marian Pigford moved to
Delaware in 1941 when he accepted employment with the
DuPont Company, and very shortly thereafter he began his
association with the University of Delaware on a part-time
basis, teaching evening and weekend courses. His depart-
ment continues to receive regular requests to this day
nearly half a century later for copies of his long out-of-
print textbook, The Application of Differential Equations to Chemical
Engineering Problems, which was based on his early lectures
at our university and coauthored with another DuPont col-
league W. R. Marshall.
In 1947 AlIan Colburn, noting that Robert Pigford was
spending increasing portions of his evening and weekend
hours on campus, invited him to come to the university
279
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
during weekday daylight periods as well. The invitation
was an offer to appoint him, at age thirty, chairman of the
Department of Chemical Engineering. Robert Pigford
consulted his industrial colleagues about the wisdom of
such a move; their response was to advise him to make a
listing of the objective advantages of each career alternative.
Of course, they were confident that a continuing productive
career with 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. programs and with few resources. And just
as they had anticipated, when the listing was made, all of
the objective advantages were with the industrial option.
But, of course, there were also nonquantifiable subjective
attractions to the university career: forging a new department
and, indeed, assisting in the development of an entire university;
working with succeeding classes of young scholars and assisting
in the emerging renaissance of his profession; and getting
the opportunity in Robert Pigford's words "to have fun
professionally. "
We all know what his choice was, but this story was the
basis of his frequent advice to students and to younger
colleagues in subsequent years: "always choose the profes-
sional alternative which you would find to be the most en-
joyable. It is only by making this choice that you will throw
yourself into your work with sufficient enthusiasm and vigor
to become an accomplished professional and, as a by-product,
a serene and supportive spouse and parent."
What fun it was for all of us who were to be associated
with him! We learned to laugh together as well as to work
together, and to live together. Marian and Robert Pigford
opened their hearts as well as their home to our families,
and we benefitted unashamedly from their devotion to this,
their family of scholars. If any of us, who were long-term
friends of the Pigfords, developed some altruistic qualities,
it would have been due in large measure to their inspired example.
Robert Pigford did not enjoy the many administrative
chores his position implied, but he dealt with them forthrightly.
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ROBERT L. PIGFORD
281
Several of his colleagues remember his unique manner of
seeking advice on major administrative issues. All faculty
offices, in those long ago days in Brown Laboratory, were
along one corridor: the chairman's at one end and the
most recently appointed assistant professor at the other.
Robert Pigford simply gathered any papers necessary for a
discussion of the issue in one hand and, with a pad and
pencil in the other, proceeded to interview each faculty
colleague in turn. When he came to the end of the hallway,
perhaps no more than thirty minutes later, he had all the
information he needed for an informer! decision and none
of his colleagues were diverted from their activities for more
than a few minutes each. How nostalgically one looks back
upon such a straightforward procedure in these days of
excessive committee responsibilities! Once, when this pro-
cedure was described to a faculty friend from another depart-
ment, the latter queried "How could you be sure he would
accept your advice?" We who were his friends were speechless:
this was simply an unthinkable occurrence in the Pigford
department. Of course he would accept advice if he requested
it; his generosity of spirit was such that chthonian machinations
between him and his colleagues were simply unthinkable.
His colleagues, in turn, were usually equally ready to grant
him discretion in use of any advice he sought. Such indeed
was the Pigford department: one administered by mutual
altruism. And his vision for his university was that all depart-
ments would some day practice such altruism. Can there
be a more beautiful vision?
Professionally, his department developed rapidly under
his leadership to become one of the outstanding departments
nationally. 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 equipment. He was instrumental in establishing
the computer center for the University of Delaware community
and in the establishment of a graduate program in metal-
lurgy and materials science.
Robert Pigford's advice was sought by numerous indus-
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
trial, academic, and governmental institutions. He was deeply
interested in, and concerned by, the ethical dimensions of
science and technology and served much time on national
committees devoted to clean air standards and to the safe
disposal of nuclear wastes. In addition, from 1983 until his
death Robert Pigford served as the gubernatorially appointed
faculty representative on his university's board of trustees.
Robert Pigford received almost all the awards for leadership
in research and education of his principal professional so-
ciety, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. On
the occasion of its seventy-fifth anniversary, he was named
as one of thirty foremost leaders of the chemical engineering
profession. He was elected to the National Academy of
Engineering in 1971 and the National Academy of Sciences
in 1972- one of only a small number of scholars nationally
to achieve this dual distinction. The university has recognized
this distinction by bestowing on him the unique title of
university professor in 1975 and by naming him as its first
Alison scholar in 1977. In 1988 he was named Delaware's
Engineer of the Year by the Delaware Society of Professional
. ~ .
. 4 nglIleerS~
Robert Pigford was the founding editor of the journal
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Fundamentals, an activity
to which he devoted a full quarter century. In 1965 he left
Delaware to serve as a professor at the University of California,
Berkeley; he returned ten years later.
To sum up, Robert Pigford lived the life of a most distin-
guished scholar and most unselfish, magnanimous leader,
whose love for his university was so deep that he really
lived for the day when all of it might function as serenely
and effectively as his own department did when he was its
chairman. To the extent that we who are here today achieve
this, we are building the memorial to him he would wish to
have. His unselfishness is perhaps best summed up in the
words of the late Robert Perry, one of his earliest students:
"A Prince among Men." We miss him.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
tributes trial
