Pete Rossin's legacy "will literally last forever"

He possessed a wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, he listened carefully, and he insisted on being called by his first name.

And his unprecedented generosity to Lehigh has given an invaluable boost to the university's engineering research programs.

Those are some of the impressions that Peter C. Rossin made on the professors whose positions he endowed with his gifts to Lehigh.

Rossin, who gave Lehigh the biggest gift in its history, died on Sunday, Aug. 10, near Pittsburgh.

In 1998, Rossin and his wife, Ada, made a $25-million commitment to Lehigh, and the university's board of trustees named the engineering college in his honor. Over the next five years, the Rossins gave the college an additional $2.5 million, making it possible to award six Rossin Assistant Professorships, two Rossin Senior Professorships and 12 Rossin graduate fellowships.

Mayuresh Kothare, associate professor of chemical engineering, recalled a presentation he made to Rossin when he and five other faculty members were named Rossin Assistant Professors in 2001.

"Pete showed very little reaction during my presentation, making me think that perhaps he was not paying much attention to this technical briefing," Kothare said.

"However, he took me by surprise when, at the end of my presentation, he asked several very detailed questions about the impact of my research on commercial portable power sources.

"His questions made it quite clear to me that he was very perceptive in recognizing the potential commercial impact of an area of research which was seemingly outside his domain of expertise. Needless to say, perhaps these may have been the exact abilities which must have allowed him to rise in the business world as a leader in commercializing new technology."

Richard Vinci, Rossin Assistant Professor of materials science and engineering, recalled Rossin as a "very strong, affable person with a keen intellect.

"I particularly enjoyed showing him some recent discoveries we had made with titanium, since titanium was the core of his business for many years."

Vinci said the funds from his endowment are having an impact far beyond his own research program.

"Approximately half of the funds are being used to upgrade donated x-ray equipment, adding new research capabilities that will be used by many people doing materials research around campus.

"The other half is being used to match National Science Foundation funds acquired by Svetlana Tatic-Lucic (assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering), Marvin White (professor of materials science and engineering) and me to purchase a deep silicon etcher, a critical tool for fabricating micromechanical devices and sensors."

Derick Brown, Rossin Assistant Professor of civil and environmental engineering, said the funds from his endowment have enabled him to enlarge his department's Environmental Engineering Microbiology Laboratory, "providing much-needed bench space with a biological hood and Type-I water.

"Mr. Rossin has significantly enhanced the research experiences of the students working in my lab, and for this I am very grateful," Brown said.

Anthony McHugh, Rossin Professor and chair of chemical engineering, said the funds from an endowed chair "give a professor freedom to apply money where it is most needed, and that almost always means graduate student tuition and stipend support, postdoctoral salaries...[and] laboratory equipment and supplies."

McHugh is using his endowment to help support a postdoctoral researcher and a graduate student who are investigating polymer processing and modeling fiber spinning and film blowing.

"These are two extremely important industrial polymer processes [that] together account for nearly 15 percent - about $160 billion - of the manufacturing segment of the gross domestic product. So the work my students are doing has a real impact on the outside world.

"Generous gifts such as Peter Rossin's are the ultimate expression of commitment to the future through education because they create a legacy that literally lasts forever."

Kothare says he saw a different side of Rossin last fall when Mohamed El-Aasser, dean of the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, invited the Rossin Assistant Professors to a lunch with Rossin and French physicist Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, the former Nobel Laureate.

At this meeting, said Kothare, Rossin and de Gennes discussed the liberation of France during World War II, which de Gennes lived through and Rossin, a war-time military pilot, helped bring about.

"It was an unusual and enlightening experience seeing two individuals, one an American businessman, and another a French physicist, exchanging memories of World War II and the liberation of France," Kothare said.

"During this meeting, Pete came across as an astute statesman representing the American ideals of freedom and democracy, having lived through the better part of the 20th century."