Donald L. Katz

The late Donald Katz starts the interview by briefly referring to his current projects but then describes his family background and his genealogical interests, stimulated by his 1952 trip to his father's birthplace in a German village. Katz went to a small country school in rural Michigan but was encouraged by a church minister to attend high school in a nearby town. After working in a machine shop, Katz entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and majored in chemical engineering. He put himself through college by hard effort; cleaning offices, restaurant work and some summers back in machine shops. As he continued into graduate studies, Donald Katz acted as George Brown's assistant, helping other graduate students and junior faculty, and with patent cases. He recalls courses, coworkers and faculty at Ann Arbor and gives three anecdotes illustrating the influence of surface chemistry, as taught by Floyd Bartell, at later stages of Katz's career. When Katz started his research career at Phillips Petroleum he was assigned to reservoir studies and he summarizes some of his activities during this period. An invitation by Brown brought Katz back to the University of Michigan and he details his early researches and consulting work. The war years altered some of his teaching and research responsibilities and led him, for instance, into heat transfer investigations. On Brown's promotion to Dean, Katz took over as departmental chairman for several years. During this part of the interview Donald Katz describes his involvement in the introduction of computer education into the chemical engineering curriculum, both at Ann Arbor and nationally. Other recollections follow: safety and the hazards of bulk chemicals; pipelines; the underground storage of gas and air; the origins of the Handbook of Natural Gas Engineering. Katz concludes his interview with some thoughts on the changes in the academic chemical engineering profession over his long career.

Phillips Petroleum Company

1933 - 1936 Research Engineer

University of Michigan

1936 - 1942 Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering

University of Michigan

1942 - 1943 Associate Professor

University of Michigan

1943 - 1964 Professor

University of Michigan

1951 - 1962 Chairman, Chemical Engineering Department

University of Michigan

1964 - 1977 A. H. White University Professor

University of Michigan

1977 - 1989 Emeritus Professor

James J. Bohning

James J. Bohning is professor emeritus of chemistry at Wilkes University, where he was a faculty member from 1959 to 1990. He served there as chemistry department chair from 1970 to 1986 and environmental science department chair from 1987 to 1990. Bohning was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986; he received the division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989 and has presented more than forty papers at national meetings of the society. Bohning was on the advisory committee of the society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program from its inception in 1992 through 2001 and is currently a consultant to the committee. He developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and he was the foundation’s director of oral history from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, Bohning was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society. He is currently a visiting research scientist and CESAR Fellow at Lehigh University. In May 2005, he received the Joseph Priestley Service Award from the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society.