Robert M. Pierson ’40

A longtime Hudson, Ohio, resident, Bob, who survived his wife, the former Jane Stephens, and son David, died June 20, 2007.

Bob always was the person on hand opening day at the nearby ski slopes. He and classmate Jake Rogers founded Ski-40 and kept it active. These classmates gathered to ski in Vermont or New Hampshire until 2006.

Bob prepared at Staunton Military Academy and majored in chemical engineering at Princeton, achieving second-group departmental and general honors. He was on the freshman wrestling squad, 150-pound football team, and intramural boxing team, and was a member of the Civil Aeronautic Authority Program and Key and Seal Club.

Bob joined Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Akron in synthetic rubber research, becoming manager in 1956 and then director of research. He was instrumental in arranging research support in Princeton's chemistry department. He belonged to various national and local professional societies, was a trustee of the Artificial Heart Research Foundation, and received several public-service awards.

His retirement did not end his lifelong pursuit of inventions and patents, but merely changed the direction of his creativity to wind-generated power devices that were inexpensive enough for the impoverished of the Third WorId.

His classmates wish to extend their condolences to Bob's survivors.