ECS President | 1947-1948 George William Heise was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 27, 1888. He received his B.S. degree at the University of Wisconsin. For the next two years, he taught at Grinnell College in Iowa and at DePaul University in Chicago where he was head of the Department of Physics. In 1911, he returned to the University of Wisconsin to work with Dr. Louis J. Kahlenberg (Society President 1930-1931). He received the M.S. degree in 1912. He…
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ECS President | 1963-1964 Walter J. Hamer was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania on November 5, 1907. After receiving his undergraduate training at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa., he attended Yale University graduate school and obtained his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry in 1932. In 1966 he was awarded an honorary D.S. from Juniata College at the dedication of its new Science Center. He returned to Yale for two years as a U.S. Navy post doctorate Research Fellow. In July 1934,…
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At every ECS meeting, there is generally one technical session that everyone can attend, and that is the ECS Lecture. The Society has benefited over the years from invited lectures delivered by a series of notable speakers. In earlier days, there were the Joseph W. Richards Memorial Lectures in honor of the Society's first president. These lectures were presented annually and the texts were published in ECS Transactions. The Richards Lectures were discontinued after 1958. In 1970, the policy of...
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ECS President | 1969-1970 Nelson Cory Cahoon was born in Bloomfield, Ontario, Canada on October 12, 1904. He received his A.B. and M.A. degrees from the University of Toronto in 1925 and 1926, respectively, his research being done under Dr. W. Lash Miller. His entire professional career was spent in the field of batteries with the Union Carbide Corp. He began by joining the Canadian National Carbon Co., Toronto in 1926 as control chemist. In 1928, he was transferred to…
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ECS President | 1977-1978 Douglas N. Bennion was born in Ogden, Utah on March 10, 1935. He attended public schools in Corvalis, Oregon. He received a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Oregon State College in 1957 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. Dr. Bennion worked at Dow Chemical, Pittsburg, California, from 1957 to 1960 as a chemical engineer. Assignments included working in the utilities department associated with chlorine-caustic production, organic chemicals…
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ECS President | 1981-1982 Ralph James Brodd was born in Moline Illinois on September 8, 1928. He obtained a BA in chemistry from Augustana College in 1950 and an MA and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Texas in 1953 and 1955 respectively. He won the Corrosion Division Student Essay Contest in 1954. Dr. Brodd joined the National Bureau of Standards in 1955 and worked in the areas of standard cells, kinetics of battery-related reactions, and internal impedance...
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ECS President | 1987-1988 Fritz G. Will was born in Breslau, Germany on January 12, 1931. He received his B.S. degree in Physics in 1953, his M.S., and Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 1959 all from the Technical University, Munich, Germany. His thesis, under the direction of Professor C.A. Knorr, was on the “Investigation of Hydrogen and Oxygen Chemisorbed Layers on Noble Metal Electrodes with a New Non-Steady State Method”. Dr. Will joined the research staff of the U.S. Army…
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ECS President | 1989-1990 Elton James Cairns was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 7, 1932. He received B.S. degrees (Summa Cum Lauda) in chemistry and in chemical engineering from the Michigan Technological University in 1955. He earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1959. Dr. Cairns joined the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York in 1959. He conducted research on ion-exchange membrane fuel cells, electrocatalysis, surface chemistry, the anodic oxidation of…
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ECS President | 1995-1996 Kathryn Rice Bullock was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma on September 24, 1945. She received a B.A. in English with a chemistry minor from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1967. She became interested in electrochemistry while working as a Research technician on Ni/Zn batteries at Gates Company, Denver. She enrolled in Northwestern University for graduate work. In 1969, she was an Electrochemical Society Summer fellow and earned an M.S. in Chemistry. She became a National Institutes…
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ECS President | 2003-2004 Bruno Scrosati was born in Ortisei, Italy, in 1937, and passed on November 5, 2024. Renowned for his work in electrochemical energy conversion and storage, he was among the pioneers of ion battery technology particularly the “rocking chair” battery, published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society (M. Lazzari, B. Scrosati, J. Electrochem. Soc. 1980, 127, 773-774). Dr. Scrosati received his PhD in Electrochemistry from the University of Rome. From 1964 to 1966, he was a…
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