Dr. S. Donald Stookey – 2010 National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductee
March 2010
One of the most venerable inventors in Corning’s history – Dr. S. Donald Stookey – has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr. Stookey is best-known at Corning for his discovery of the strong, lightweight, thermal-shock-resistant material that became glass ceramics and paved the way for Corning’s success in the consumer cookware market.
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Dr. S. Donald Stookey
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Dr. Stookey attended the induction ceremonies in Washington. “It’s a wonderful honor and I’m very happy, at my age of 94, to still be remembered for contributing something positive to research and to people’s everyday lives,” he said recently in an interview from his home near Rochester.
Over Dr. Stookey’s nearly five decades with Corning, he led breakthrough discoveries in the areas of photochromics and photosensitive glass. Topping his many previous professional honors is the National Medal of Technology, which he received in 1987 from then-President Ronald Reagan in recognition of his lifetime of innovations.
He joined Corning in 1940, having just earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He immersed himself in exploratory research, studying the complex chemistry of oxidation and its effects on the color of glass as it changes temperatures – discoveries which helped lead to the development of photosensitive glass. From there, he led the development of Fotoform® glass – a composition which allowed chemicals, in effect, to punch miniscule holes in glass. The application had potential for use in the nascent color television tube market.
He secured his place in Corning folklore in 1952, when he put a Fotoform plate into a furnace set at 600 degrees Celsius. The furnace malfunctioned and the temperature rose to 900C. Expecting to find a molten mess inside the furnace, Dr. Stookey instead discovered an opaque, milky-white plate. He removed it from the furnace, but his tongs slipped and the plate bounced unbroken on the floor, clanging like a piece of steel. “It crystallized so completely that it could not flow,” he later wrote, “ and was obviously much stronger than ordinary glass.”
While the formation of this first piece of glass-ceramics was “a lucky accident,” Dr. Stookey said, he followed up with years of rigorous research. Ultimately, he confirmed his belief that nucleation – the critical first step in the crystallization process – could initiate a host of new crystalline materials from glass. Corning patented the material as Pyroceram® glass ceramic.
“It opened up an ongoing opportunity for research by hundreds of chemists all over the world,” he says.
By the end of the 1950s, it also led to one of the most successful product lines in Corning’s history: Corning Ware®, which would become an enduring staple in kitchens all around the world.
“I’m proud of Corning Ware,” Dr. Stookey says simply. “It’s made a lot of people happy."
Dr. Stookey inspires Corning researchers to this day. The technology community’s highest honor for exploratory research is the Stookey Award. Winners in recent years have been responsible for groundbreaking discoveries in environmentally friendly LCD glass, diesel filter and substrate material, and products to enable biochemical research.
Dr. David Morse, senior vice president and director of Corporate Research, has vivid memories of working closely with Dr. Stookey in the late 1970s. Morse had just graduated from MIT and Dr. Stookey had retired, but came back frequently to the lab.
“It was a classic scenario that illustrates just why our labs are successful – we have a culture in which people at all stages of their careers get together and share knowledge,” Morse says.
“That is not something one can learn in school – Corning’s labs are unique, and Don Stookey and his contemporaries built our culture, just through their passion for science and their ability to bring new products to life.”
Additional information:
Dr. Stookey joins seven other Corning researchers in being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Don Keck, Peter Schultz and Robert Maurer were inducted in 1993 for making optical fiber a practical reality. In 2000, Franklin Hyde joined the Hall of Fame for his creation of fused silica glass processes. Ron Lewis, Rod Bagley and Irv Lachman were inducted in 2002 for their extrusion process to create thin-walled honeycomb structures – the basis for Corning’s environmental products.
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