Engineers: Past & Present

Nuclear engineer Thomas H. Pigford, GA Alpha 1943, passed away last week at his home in California.

The New York Times obituary profiled Pigford’s contributions to the nuclear power industry and his involvement with the launch of M.I.T.’s nuclear engineering graduate program.

Pigford was part of investigations of nuclear accidents at Three Miles Island and Chernobyl. He also “helped develop the process used by the government for years to harvest plutonium for bombs from irradiated reactor fuel.”

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On February 25, former NASA official and engineer Aaron Cohen, TX Delta 1952, died in Texas.

In 1992, Cohen was the Acting Deputy Administrator of NASA. This was the agency’s number two position, in charge, at the time.

After leaving NASA in 1993, Cohen taught engineering at his alma mater, Texas A&M University. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at A&M. Read obituary

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DailyTech discusses the recent history of research related to power storage and generation in batteries, specifically the carbon nanotubes.

It also details recent breakthrough research from MIT, “producing electricity with carbon nanotubes.” One of the author’s of the paper is MIT’s Dr. Michael Strano, NY R ’97, who discussed the new phenomenon of “thermopower waves.”

“[Thermopower waves] opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare.” Read the article for more detail on the discovery from Dr. Strano.

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