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ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES •
MARCH 2014
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HIGHLIGHTS...
In Memoriam
ASM
news
IN MEMORIAM
Richard J. Coar
, Life Member of Roanoke,
Va., died on December 29 at age 92. An aero-
space propulsion pioneer, he was instrumen-
tal in leading Pratt &Whitney into gas turbine
engine design and development, and was in-
volved with every major P&W engine pro-
gram. Born in Hanover, N.H., Coar won a
4-year scholarship to Tufts University’s engi-
neering school, receiving a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical en-
gineering in 1942. He was a summer intern in the engineering
department at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, in East Hartford,
Conn., later returning as a full time test engineer. In 1956 Coar
became the chief engineer at the Florida Research and Develop-
ment Center in West Palm Beach. In 1971 he returned to Con-
necticut as a vice president responsible for commercial and
military engine development. In 1976 he became the executive
vice president and in 1983 was named president of Pratt &
Whitney. In 1984, Coar became the executive vice president of
United Technologies, retiring in 1986. Coar was elected to the
National Academy of Engineering, was a member of ASME, and
became an ASM Distinguished Life Member in 1985. He re-
ceived the Daniel Guggenheim Medal in 1998 and held more
than a dozen patents.
Harold Mendell Cobb,
92, died at Cross-
lands in Kennett Square, Pa., on January 28.
He was born February 3, 1921, in Dallas and
raised in Philadelphia. He attended Philadel-
phia public schools, theWilliamPenn Charter
School, and graduated from Yale University
with a degree in metallurgical engineering.
Cobb worked in the metals industry for 22
years, followed by 18 years as a staff manager at the American
Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), in Philadelphia, from
which he retired in 1983. He was a principal developer of the
Unified Numbering System (UNS) for Metals and an expert on
stainless steel and its history. He held a patent on an electron
beam welding process for zirconium. In addition to being an
ASM Life Member, he was a member of ASTM and the Ameri-
can Name Society. During retirement, he served for 10 years as
secretary of an International Committee on the Standardization
(ISO) of steel products and was the editor of 25 books on steel.
Cobb considered his greatest achievement to be authorship of
The History of Stainless Steel
(ASM, 2010). His final publication
with ASMwas
Dictionary of Metals,
a book of metallurgical def-
initions and a historical overview of metals, published in 2012.
Lawrence “Larry” Kaufman, FASM,
founder of the CALPHAD Community,
passed away on December 2 in Israel. Kauf-
man received a Sc.D. in 1955 at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where
his interest in phase equilibria was sparked by
association with Mats Hillert and Morris
Cohen. He joined ManLabs in 1958 as a re-
search scientist, becoming vice president in 1973. His success
in convincing the NSF to hold a session on the calculation of
phase diagrams within a larger workshop on Phase Equilibria at
Gaithersburg in 1975, led to the CALPHAD technique. CAL-
PHAD Inc. was founded the same year. The acronym was also
the title of a new journal published by Pergamon Press in 1977,
with Kaufman as the editor-in-chief. He became an ASM fellow
and president of ManLabs in1985 and was the recipient of the
first Gibbs Triangle award instituted by the CALPHAD Com-
munity in 1986. Kaufman’s pioneering work was also recognized
when he became the inaugural recipient of the ASM J. Willard
Gibbs Phase Equilibria Award in 2008.
Norbert F. Vinatieri,
of Whittier, Calif., a Life Member, died
January 7 at age 92. Born in South Dakota, he received a degree
in metallurgical engineering from the South Dakota School of
Mines and Technology in 1943. He was a lieutenant junior grade
in the U.S. Navy and served in the Pacific. Vinatieri worked for
several metallurgical companies in the Los Angeles area and was
involved in assessing metal fatigue of the Saturn V rocket engine
that launched the Apollo missions to the moon. He served as a
volunteer with the Los Angeles ASM Chapter and Westec for
many years.
Members
in the News
Anderson's Application to Practice Award
ASM trustee, Iver E. Anderson, FASM,
senior metallurgist
at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and ad-
junct professor in the Materials Science and Engineering
Department at Iowa State Uni-
versity, was chosen as a recipi-
ent of the 2014 Application to
Practice Award by TMS, the
Minerals, Metals and Materials
Society. The award is given to a
person who has demonstrated
outstanding achievement in
transferring research in metal-
lurgy and materials into com-
mercial production and pract-
ical use as a representative of an
industrial, academic, governmental, or technical organization.
Anderson accepted the award at the 2014 TMS-AIME awards
ceremony held February 18 in San Diego. Anderson has a Ph.D.
in metallurgical engineering from University of Wisconsin
(1982); he has more than 170 publications and 36 patents.
NACE Honors Perdomo
Dr. Jorge J. Perdomo
is a 2014 recipient of
the 2014 NACE Technical Achievement
Award. Perdomo, of the ExxonMobil Re-
search and Engineering Company in Baytown,
Texas, is recognized for his practical approach
to solving corrosion-related problems of pres-
sure equipment via failure analysis, materials
selection, life assessment/prediction, and re-
pair methods in the oil and gas, refining, petrochemical, and