ECS President | 1978-1979
ECS Secretary | 1968-1974
Dennis Robert Turner was born in London, England on January 13, 1920. He received a B.A. degree from Lake Forest College in 1942. From 1942 to 1945, he worked at Westinghouse Research Labs on R&D of Radar components. He invented a method of electropolishing silver using an anodic pulsing technique. This work led to the development of the Periodic Reverse (PR) current plating process.
After WWII, Dr. Turner entered graduate school at the U of Michigan. He received an M.S. Chem. in 1947 and his Ph.D. in 1950 under Professor Alfred L. Ferguson (Society President 1949-1950).
He returned to Westinghouse Research Labs in 1949 and did research and development on electroplating and electropolishing. Several patents and publications resulted from this work.
Dr. Turner joined the Electrochemical Research Department of Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill, N.J. in 1952. At Bell, his work involved many areas of electrochemistry including power sources (lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, and fuel cells), electrodeposition (effect of additives on deposit physical properties and plating distribution into small through holes), semiconductor electrochemistry (electropolishing silicon, discovery of porous silicon, mechanism of etching Ge and Si), electrochemical engineering (automatic plating bath analysis, processing semiconductor and photonic devices, printed circuit and connector process development, design construction and installation of four production reel to reel strip plating machines for connector terminals for Western Electric plants) and chemical sensor development for on-line monitoring and control of plating processes. He authored 49 technical papers, 6 book chapters, and was granted 21 U.S. patents.
Dr. Turner retired from AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1985. He took on several consulting jobs including a five week project in China as chief electrochemist to start up a U.S. made automatic electroplating machine for battery electrode manufacture. Dr. Turner attended his first meeting in 1945 and was active in many aspects of Society affairs. He served the Electrodeposition Division as Secretary-Treasurer, Vice-Chairman, and Chairman (1962-1964). He was elected Secretary of the Society in 1967 and served two three year terms. In 1975 he became Vice-President of the Society and served as President for the term 1978-1979. He headed the Ad Hoc committee that recommended purchase of the present office building in Pennington. He chaired the Ad Hoc Building Fund Committee which raised over $70,000 to help pay off the mortgage. In 1986, Dr. Turner was appointed Chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee which recommended many improvements in Society operations that were adopted. Dr. Turner organized and participated in a Short Course on Chemical Sensors that was presented four times. He organized the Sensor Group of the Society in 1988 and served as its first Chairman.
Dr. Turner was made an Honorary Member in 1980. He was elected to Fellow of ECS in 1992 and received the Edward Goodrich Acheson Award and Prize the same year.
