Gary W. Poehlein
Gary W. Poehlein was born in 1936 and grew up in the small town of Tell City on the Ohio River in Southern Indiana. He received a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering degree from Purdue University in 1958. From 1958 to 1961, he was a plant design engineer for Proctor and Gamble Company, where he supervised startups in Staten Island, New York, Omaha, Nebraska, and Lexington, Kentucky. In 1961, he took his growing family back to Purdue, where he received a Master of Science in 1963 and a Ph.D. in 1966. His graduate work was under the direction of Professor Jack Woods in the area of mixing.
In 1965, he joined the Faculty of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Lehigh University, where he advanced through the professorial ranks to become full professor. Early in his career at Lehigh, he became interested in emulsion polymerization, the field that was to hold his interest for the next thirty years. In a way, that is very typical of Gary, in order to learn more about emulsion polymerization, he organized a short course in this subject in 1970. He invited the best researchers in the field, including Wendell Smith, famous for the Smith Ewart Model of emulsion polymerization, and John Vanderhoff of Dow Chemical. This course continues today as an annual event at Lehigh. In 1978, a European version of the course was started, and continues to this day, every August in Davos, Switzerland. Over the years, over 4,000 industrial scientists and engineers have attended these two courses. The short course quickly led to the founding of the Emulsion Polymers Institute (EPI) and the Emulsion Polymers Industrial Liaison Program at Lehigh University. Gary served as Co‐Director of the EPI from its inception until 1978. The other Co‐Director was John Vanderhoff, who left Dow to join the Lehigh faculty. While at Lehigh, Gary served on the Bethlehem Area School Board, serving as its chair in 1973. Out of that experience, he taught a graduate course in Public‐Sector Labor Relations in the School of Education.
In 1978, Gary joined the Faculty of the School of Chemical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as Director of the School from 1978 to 1986. While Director, he rebuilt an underachieving academic unit by recruiting 14 new faculty, increasing the graduate enrollment from 12 to over 100, increasing annual unrestricted support to the School from $75,000 to over $500,000, establishing a graduate cooperative education program, establishing an industrial liaison program and an interdisciplinary education program in polymer science and engineering. The phenomenal growth in reputation of the School of Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech unquestionably originated with the vision and energy of Gary Poehlein.
From 1986 to 1989, Gary was associate Vice President for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies at Georgia Tech. His most notable achievement in this position was the relocation of the Institute of Paper Chemistry (now the Institute of Paper Science and Technology) from Appleton Wisconsin to the Georgia Tech campus. In doing so, he was able to obtain a $15,000,000 capital commitment from the State of Georgia. From 1989 to 1995, he served as Vice President for Interdisciplinary Programs. As such, he was responsible for an institutional budget of $5,000,000 annually. While continuing as VP for Interdisciplinary Research, from 1992 to 1993 Gary served as Executive Assistant to the President of Georgia Tech. During this period, the Office of the President was involved in negotiations that resulted in the 1996 Summer Olympic Village being located on the Georgia Tech campus.
From 1996 to 2000, Gary served as Director of the Chemical and Transport Systems Division of the National Science Foundation. In this capacity, he was responsible for the awarding of approximately $40,000,000 annually in research grants. At this point, Gary tried to retire, but was unsuccessful, and became Interim Chair and Visiting Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at Lehigh University. In 2002, Gary retired again. His friends are betting he will not succeed this time either.
During this long period of organizational and administrative challenges, Gary managed to do landmark work in continuous emulsion polymerization, emulsion copolymerization, and particle morphology. In 1989, he won the Mac Pruitt Award of the Council of Chemical Research for leadership in developing academic‐industrial relations. He has published over 100 scientific papers, authored numerous book chapters, and chaired major international conferences and symposia. Along the way, he managed to find time to mentor the author of this biosketch.
Gary has been married to Sharon Wood Poehlein for over 40 years. They have three children: Steven (a chemical engineer with Merck & Co.), Valorie, and Sandra. In his spare time (more plentiful recently), he enjoys fine woodworking and sailing (keeping one large sailboat on the Chesapeake Bay, and another in the Florida Keys). During the months of December and January, you will find him and Sharon in the Florida Keys, where they share the holidays with their children and grandchildren. In August, you will find them climbing the Swiss Alps in conjunction with the emulsion polymers short course. The rest of the year, they reside in the historic district of Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River in Washington, DC.
This series of issues of Polymer Reaction Engineering is gratefully dedicated to Gary W. Poehlein, teacher, researcher, administrator, mentor, and friend.
F. Joseph Schork
Professor and Associate Chair
School of Chemical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia