Rudolph (Rudy) Pariser was born in Harbin, China to Ludwig Jacob Pariser and Lia Rubinstein. His father was a German POW during World War I, who escaped from his Russian captives near Manchuria while being transported on the Trans-Siberian Railway. He made his way to Harbin, where he became a live-in tutor for the Shapiro family, and ended up eventually taking over their import/export business. Rudy's mother was a refugee of the Russian Revolution and a relative of the Shapiro family. She made her way to Harbin from Estonia after her family's leather factory was destroyed in the Revolution.
Rudy describes his childhood in Harbin as being quite pleasant. His family lived in a very nice apartment, with servants and a boat on the river. He attended a German school in Harbin, the Von Hindenburg Schule. His friends included children from the foreign business community in Harbin, which was reasonably large, as well as Russian refugees who had fled to Harbin from the Revolution. In 1936, Rudy was sent to an American Missionary School in Beijing, where he lived in the dormitories. The school had a rather strict, quite religious atmosphere. In the summer of 1937, the school was destroyed by the invading Japanese.
Rudy's parents next sent him to the American School in Japan, in Tokyo. It was a school of nearly two hundred students, and many of his teachers were recent American college graduates with advanced degrees who had relished the opportunity to come to Japan and teach. While there, Rudy reinforced his interest in chemistry, thanks in part to the influence of his chemistry teacher, David Misner, whose love for the subject was apparent in the way he taught. Rudy was also strongly encouraged by his father, whom he remembers saying, "If I were you, I wouldn't be a businessman. I'd be a chemist."
By the summer of 1941, tension between Japan and the United States was high and Rudy's parents knew that Rudy had to leave for the U.S. to continue his education. They decided to send Rudy to California with his mother, while his father stayed behind with the business in Harbin. The attack on Pearl Harbor, on 7 December 1941, prevented Rudy's mother from returning to China. Rudy attended the University of California at Berkeley and worked as a Russian translator, and later at the Richmond shipyards, to earn money for himself and his mother. He earned a degree in chemical technology from Berkeley in less than three years, where he was taught by renowned professors like Joel Hildebrand, William F. Giauque, Melvin Calvin, and Frank Oppenheimer.
Upon graduation, he began working as a chemist for Kaiser Permanente Mills. He held that job only briefly before his strong feelings about the War got the best of him and he enlisted in the Army. Although he had a college degree in chemistry and could speak multiple languages, Rudy was also very physically fit, and since fitness was of the highest priority in the Army, he was placed in the infantry. There he was trained for the invasion and occupation of Germany, but through a series of errors he was sent to the Signal Corps in Missouri instead of the front lines, and never actually made it to Germany.
After Rudy had completed his military service, he pursued his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Minnesota. He trained under Dr. Robert L. Livingston and did his thesis on chlorophyll photosensitized reactions in solutions. Rudy also met Robert G. Parr for the first time at Minnesota, where Parr was finishing up his Ph.D. in 1947, about when Rudy arrived.
Rudy Pariser received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1950, whereupon he began looking for employment. He interviewed at DuPont's Jackson Laboratory, in the Organic Chemicals Department. Though he had been concerned that it would have a "plant" atmosphere, he found the lab to be of a very high scientific caliber. He was offered a Research Chemist position and accepted with pleasure.
One of his first assignments was to examine the stability of whitening agents, and after that work was completed he proposed to work on the relationship between a dye's structure and its color. He remembered that Robert Parr had done his thesis work on calculating the energy levels in ethylene and benzene, and he gained approval to engage Parr as a consultant to help with that project.
In his thesis, Parr pioneered a rigorous quantum mechanical procedure, which was extremely demanding especially in regard to computing inter-electronic repulsion integrals. However, the calculated energy levels were not in satisfactory agreement with experimental values. Soon after commencing their collaboration, Parr discovered the "zero differential overlap approximation" which dramatically simplified the calculation of the repulsion integrals; the same results for benzene as in Parr's thesis could now be calculated very easily. However, in order to achieve agreement with Parr's experiment, Rudy discovered a method for adjusting the values of these integrals, which was based on the use of atomic ionization potentials and electron affinities. Then, taking advantage of IBM's new computer technology, Rudy developed a program to perform such calculations for large molecules very efficiently. He produced results that were in very close agreement with experimental values, and that also predicted as yet undiscovered excited states, such as triplet states. In recognition of subsequent contributions by John Pople, the theory became known as the Pariser-Parr-Pople theory, or PPP theory. The theory continues to receive worldwide recognition.
With the development of PPP theory, Rudy had become well known in the scientific community. At DuPont, he began his rise through the ranks of research management. In 1970, Rudy was promoted to Director of Exploratory Research, Elastomers Department. Under his leadership, his group developed many important products for DuPont, including certain Viton products, and new products like Vamac, Hytrel, and Kalrez. At that time, also reporting to Rudy was Charles J. Pedersen, who was honored with the chemistry Nobel Prize in 1987.
Subsequently, as Science Director of Advanced Materials in Central Research, Rudy's organization discovered and helped to commercialize group transfer polymerization, novel high temperature superconductors, and other electronic and ceramic products.
Rudy's success with products was matched by his skills as a manager. During his long tenure in DuPont management, Rudy mentored many people who became future leaders and Vice Presidents at DuPont and elsewhere, including Thomas M. Connelly, Uma Chowdhry, and James M. Meyer.
In 2003, Rudy was awarded the Lavoisier Medal, DuPont's highest award for technical achievement.
Rudy retired from DuPont, and in 1989 he formed R. Pariser & Co., Inc., consulting primarily for R&D management. He also remained active on various university advisory boards, such as at the American Chemical Society, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
Rudy was married to Louise (formerly Margaret Louise Marsh) in Bermuda in 1972. Louise hails from an old, established family in North Carolina. Although Louise and Rudy were brought up "on opposite sides of the world," their values are extremely compatible. Rudy and his wife reside currently in Hockessin, Delaware.
Infantry and Signal Corps, United States Army
1944 - 1946
Enlisted
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1950 - 1954
Research Chemist, Organic Chemicals Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1954 - 1959
Research Supervisor, Organic Chemicals Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1959 - 1963
Division Head, Elastomer Chemicals Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1967 - 1970
Assistant Laboratory Director, Elastomer Chemicals Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1967 - 1970
Laboratory Director, Elastomer Chemicals Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1970 - 1972
Director, Exploratory Research
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1970 - 1972
Manager, Research and Development, Elastomer Chemicals Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1972 - 1974
Manager, Market Research & Market Development, Elastomer Chemicals Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1974 - 1979
Director, Pioneering Research, Elastomer Chemicals Department
National Research Council, NAS/NAE
1979 - 1981
Co-chairman, Panel on Polymer Science and Engineering
National Research Council, NAS/NAE
1979 - 1982
Committee on Chemical Sciences
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1980 - 1981
Research Director, Polymer Products Department
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1981 - 1986
Director, Polymer Science, Central Research & Development Department
National Research Council, NAS/NAE
1984 - 1984
Co-chairman, Panel on High Performance Composites
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
1986 - 1988
Director, Advanced Materials Science, Central Research & Development Department
National Research Council, NAS/NAE
1986 - 1989
Committee on Materials Science and Engineering
National Science Foundation
1986 - 1989
Materials Research Advisory Committee
R. Pariser & Co., Inc.
1989 - Present
President
National Science Foundation
1994 - 1994
VPI evaluation and site visit
National Research Council, NAS/NAE
1996 - 1998
Committee on Fire Suppression Substitutes and Alternatives to Halon
National Science Foundation
1999 - 1999
Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR)
Chemical Heritage Foundation
2002 - Present
Executive, Program and Membership Committees, Joseph Priestley Society
Chemical Heritage Foundation
2003 - Present
Executive Committee, Robert Boyle Society
Chemical Heritage Foundation
2005 - Present
Board of Overseers