Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Roger BACON
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Deceased Name: Roger Bacon, physicist who found commercial uses for carbon fibers
Roger Bacon 1926-2007 Survivors: Wife of 35 years, Agnes; daughter, Elizabeth Bacon Fox of South Orange, N.J.; son, William of Mountain View, Calif.; five granddaughters; a brother; and a sister. Memorial services: 10:30 a.m. Feb. 17, Kendal at Oberlin, 600 Kendal Drive, Oberlin. Contributions: Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Donor Services, P.O. Box 4072, Pittsfield, Mass. 01202; or Westtown School, P.O. Box 1799, Westtown, Pa. 19395. Arrangements: Dicken Funeral Home and Cremation Service, Elyria.
Oberlin – Roger Bacon, who discovered stronger-than-steel microscopic graphite whiskers at Union Carbide's Snow Road research laboratory and helped develop carbon fibers for commercial use, died Friday at the Kendal at Oberlin retirement community.
The 80-year-old retired physicist's pioneering research launched a multibillion-dollar carbon fiber industry. His work led to the production of reinforced rocket nozzles, heat shields for ballistic missiles, space shuttle wings and aircraft brakes in the 1960s.
In 2004, the little-recognized man behind the giant leap forward in forging super-strength lightweight materials was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Mechanical Engineering for his groundbreaking work with carbon fibers.
"This is the U.S. equivalent of the Nobel Prize," said Brian Sullivan, a Villanova University adjunct professor who nominated Bacon for the Franklin honor. "Carbon fibers are used as reinforcement in composite materials that are used in virtually every aircraft that is fabricated in the world today. It's the construction material of choice. Roger worked in a lot of areas, but they were all related to carbon."
Bacon first experimented with graphite in the 1950s at Union Carbide. He eventually discovered a process for making continuous threads of carbon fiber with numerous commercial, industrial and military applications. The Journal of Applied Physics published his report on the discovery in 1960.
"It was a 'Eureka!' moment," Bacon told The Plain Dealer in 2004.
The Cleveland native was the youngest of four children born to a Quaker couple. His father helped establish the School of Architecture at Western Reserve University in the 1920s.
Bacon grew up in Cleveland Heights but graduated from Westtown School, a Quaker-run college-preparatory school in the Philadelphia area. He continued his education at Haverford College, which was founded by Quakers. He earned a master's degree and a doctorate in physics from Case Institute of Technology.
He began working as a research scientist at Union Carbide in 1955. He was a senior research associate with Amoco Corp. from 1986 to the late 1990s. He also taught evening classes in physics at Baldwin-Wallace College from 1959 to 1971.
Bacon received the Medal of Excellence in Composite Materials from the University of Delaware and the Henry E. Millson Award for Invention from the American Association of Textile Chemists.
He sang with several choral groups and loved to backpack, hike and camp with his family. He lived in Strongsville before moving to Kendal in 2002.
His family described Bacon as a scientist who valued truth above all else.
"That carried into everyday life," his son, Bill, said. "He was interested in helping us to face life as it is, rather than as we wished it would be. Through these open discussions, he prepared us for his own death. That was kind of his last gift. [He] really was not able to delude himself. He was really interested in facing the world as it is and helping his family do the same."
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