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ARTHUR C
1909-1992
STERN
BY MERRIL EISENBUD
ARTHUR CECIL STERN earned a worldwide reputation for his
contributions to air pollution control during a career that spanned
sixty years. He conducted important research, was a respecter!
teacher, and organized important elements of the U.S. govern-
ment programs in air pollution research and control. Above all,
he possesses! extraordinary abilities as a writer and editor.
Arthur was born in Petersburg, Virginia, but moved to Yon-
kers, New York, while he was still a child. He chose engineering
as his profession and matriculated on full scholarship at Stevens
Institute of Technology, from which he received his B.S. in
mechanical engineering in 1930 and an M.S. in 1933. After a
lapse of many years, in 1975 Stevens awarded him the doctor of
engineering (honoris cause) in recognition of his accomplish-
ments to air pollution control.
During the depression years it was not an easy matter for a
young graduate to match his professional aspirations with the
opportunities for employment that then existed. Stern was
fortunate in this respect because a research assistantship to study
methods of smoke abatement became available at Stevens. His
first-of-a-kind studies of the quantities of particulates emitted
from obvious sources of pollution, such as locomotives, ships,
and electric utilities, gave him the raw material for the first of his
many research papers, "Abating the Smoke Nuisance," which
was published in MechanicalEngineeringin 1932.
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222
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
A major opportunity developed in 1935 when he began a two-
year study of smoke pollution in New York City. This investiga-
tion emphasized particulate pollution, and it provided the first
systematic information about the quantities of airborne and
settled soot. His studies were at that time supported by the Works
Progress Administration, the agency created in the depths of the
depression mainly to provide jobs for the needy but also to
provide career opportunities for young people. The investment
made by the federal government in this way was returned many
times over during subsequent decades when Stern became a
major force in development and implementation of the Clean
Air Act.
In the early 1940s there was essentially no federal or state
involvement in air pollution control, but Stern was fortunate to
find himself in a good position to advance professionally while
continuing his interest in the subject. He was appointed chief
engineerwith the NewYork State Department of Labor, Division
of Industrial Hygiene and Labor Standards, a position that
permitted him to develop new methods of treating waste-air
before its discharge to the general atmosphere by industrial
ventilation systems. He served in this capacityfrom 1943 to 1955
and had a major influence on the newly developing field of "air
cleaning," including important improvements in bag-houses,
cyclones, and electrostatic precipitators.
By 1947 Arthur Stern recognized the need for New York City
to adopt legislation to control air pollution and wrote a letter to
the New York Times in which he suggested that there should be a
study of the political mechanisms by which air pollution in the
city could be brought under control. This initiative resulted in
passage of the first air pollution control laws by city council in
1949.
Stern moved into the center arenain the early 1950swhen the
U.S. Public Health Service was given the responsibility by Con-
gress for organizing a national effort to control air pollution.
Stern was called to Cincinnati to assume a major role in the
recently established Robert A. Taft Laboratory, where he was
charged with developing training, research, and technical assis-
tance programs. It was intended by the Congress that responsi-
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ARTHUR C. STERN
223
bility for air pollution control should remain with the states but
that the federal government should provide research support
and technical assistance. It was when he was in this post that the
landmark 1963 Clean Air Act was proposed to Congress.
In 1968 Stern accepted an appointment as professor of air
hygiene in the Department of Environmental Sciences and
Engineering at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Although he retired from that position in 197S, he remained
active until the day of his death. From his hospital bed, with full
knowledge that his long battle with cardiovascular disease was
about to end, he spent part of his last afternoon workingwith his
secretary on the final preparations for his last book, A History of
Air Pollution and its Control.
It was his writing and editing, always on the subject of air
pollution, that gave him his greatest satisfaction. In 1962 Aca-
demic Press published his two-volume reference book, AirPollu-
tion, which was an immediate success. It has been revised and
expanded and is now published as an eight-volume set, which is
used worldwide as the reference of choice for knowledge about
the sources of air pollution, its physical and chemical character-
istics, how it is transported through the atmosphere, and how it
exerts its damaging effects on materials and health. That eight-
volume magnum opus has been accompanied by a more man-
ageable Fundamentals of Air Pollution, which is widely used for
teaching purposes.
Arthur Stern was blessed by the many honors he received.
These included chairmanship of the Electric Power Research
Institute Advisory Committee and of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's National Air Quality Criteria Advisory Com-
mittee, and presidency of the International Unions of Air Pollu-
tion Prevention Associations. In 1976 he was elected to the
National Academy of Engineering, which culminated a long list
of honors received from the professional engineering societies.
Arthur was married for many years to the former Dorothy
Anspacher, with whom he raised their three children, Richard,
Elizabeth, and Robert. Dorothy died in 1975, and he was later
remarried to Katherine Barbour Periman.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
control air
