edgepedia

Engineers and materials scientists

3,787 articles

Robert A. Rapp

Robert A. Rapp is an American metallurgist who taught at Ohio State from 1963 to 1995 and is known for his work on high-temperature oxidation and hot corrosion of metals.

Robert A. Scholtz

Robert A. Scholtz is an American electrical engineer and Fred H. Cole Professor at the University of Southern California, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009 for contributions to spread-spectrum and ultra-wideband communication.

Robert Adler

Robert Adler (1913–2007) was an Austrian-born American physicist who spent nearly six decades at Zenith Electronics and created the ultrasonic wireless TV remote control, holding about 180 US patents.

Robert Alan Pritzker

Robert Alan Pritzker (1926–2011) was an American industrial engineer and manufacturing executive who built the Marmon Group of Chicago into the 19th largest private company in the United States.

Robert B. Fridley

Robert B. Fridley (1934–2006) was an American agricultural engineer at UC Davis known for mechanized fruit harvesting and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1985.

Robert B. Gilbert

Robert B. Gilbert is a geotechnical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2020 for risk-based engineering.

Robert Bowie Owens

Robert Bowie Owens (1870–1940) was an American electrical engineer who led the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the Maryland Academy of Sciences, with debated credit for discovering radon.

Robert Byron Bird

Robert Byron Bird (1924–2020) was an American chemical engineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, best known as coauthor of Transport Phenomena and for kinetic theory of polymeric fluids.

Robert C. Duncan

Robert C. Duncan (1923–2003) was an American engineer and engineering manager who led Apollo guidance and control at NASA, managed the Polaroid SX-70 camera, and directed DARPA.

Robert C. Earlougher Jr.

Robert C. Earlougher Jr. (1941–2011) was an American petroleum engineer who spent his career at Marathon Oil and wrote Advances in Well Test Analysis, the 1977 SPE monograph still used as a textbook.

Robert C. Gooding

Robert C. Gooding (1918–1999) was an American naval engineer and Navy vice admiral who served as the first commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command from 1974.

Robert C. McMaster

Robert Charles McMaster (1913–1986) was an electrical engineer and pioneer of nondestructive testing, professor of welding engineering at Ohio State and editor of the Nondestructive Testing Handbook.

Robert C. Reid

Robert C. Reid, or Robert Clark Reid, was an American chemical engineer and MIT professor best known as co-author of The Properties of Gases and Liquids.

Robert C. Sprague

Robert C. Sprague (1900–1991) was an American electronics engineer who founded the Sprague Electric Company in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1926, a leader in capacitors and semiconductors.

Robert Charles McMaster

Robert Charles McMaster (1913–1986) was an American electrical engineer, a pioneer of nondestructive testing, professor of welding engineering at Ohio State, and editor of the Nondestructive Testing Handbook.

Robert Clinton Brown

Robert Clinton Brown is an American mechanical engineer at Iowa State University known for converting biomass into fuels, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025.

Robert D. Hanson

Robert D. Hanson is an American structural and earthquake engineer, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, who received EERI's George W. Housner Medal in 2024 for earthquake hazard reduction work.

Robert D. Maurer

Robert D. Maurer (1924–2025) was an American industrial physicist who spent his career at Corning and led the team that in 1970 made the first optical fiber with losses low enough for telecommunications.

Robert E. Fontana Jr.

Robert E. Fontana Jr. is an American electrical engineer at IBM's Almaden Research Center, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 for contributions in magnetic device processing.

Robert E. Henry

Robert E. Henry is an American nuclear engineer and co-founder of Fauske & Associates, Inc., known for his work on two-phase critical flow and severe-accident phenomenology.

Robert E. McIntosh

Robert E. McIntosh (1940–1998) was an American electrical engineer and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, known for microwave remote sensing and airborne cloud radar.

Robert E. Newnham

Robert E. Newnham (1929–2009) was an American materials scientist and crystallographer at Penn State who invented the composite piezoelectric transducer in the late 1970s, transforming medical ultrasound and sonar.

Robert E. Schafrik Sr

Robert E. Schafrik Sr., fully Robert Edward Schafrik Sr. (1946–2018), was an American metallurgical engineer who led materials and process engineering at GE Aviation and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013.

Robert E. Wilson

Robert E. Wilson was an American chemical engineer who chaired Standard Oil of Indiana from 1945 to 1958 and later served on the Atomic Energy Commission.

Robert F. Davis

Robert F. Davis is an American materials scientist and emeritus Carnegie Mellon professor, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001 for developing silicon carbide and III-nitrides as practical electronic materials.

Robert F. Rushmer

Robert F. Rushmer (Robert Frazer Rushmer, 1914–2001) was an American physician and cardiac physiologist at the University of Washington who measured the beating heart in unanesthetized animals and pioneered diagnostic Doppler ultrasound.

Robert F. Sawyer

Robert F. Sawyer, born 1935, is an American mechanical engineer and UC Berkeley professor emeritus who chaired the California Air Resources Board from 2005 to 2007.

Robert F. Shepherd

Robert F. Shepherd, also known as Robert Shepherd, is a mechanical engineering professor at Cornell University who works in soft robotics and leads the Organic Robotics Laboratory.

Robert Fano

Robert Mario Fano (1917–2016) was an Italian-born American electrical engineer at MIT known for Fano's inequality in information theory and for founding Project MAC, which grew into CSAIL.

Robert Fischell

Robert Fischell is an American physicist and medical-device inventor who spent 38 years at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, inventing the first rechargeable pacemaker and flexible coronary stents.