Thomas H. Pigford

Thomas Harrington Pigford (born April 21, 1922 in Meridian , Mississippi , † February 27, 2010 in Oakland , California ) was an American nuclear chemistry engineer and university professor .

Life

After attending school, he studied chemical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and graduated in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science (BS Chemical Engineering). He then did his military service in the US Navy until the end of World War II .

After the end of the war, he completed postgraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and obtained a Master of Science (M.Sc.) there in 1948 . After that, he not only worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) from 1950 to 1952 , but also earned a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) in 1952. After a subsequent position as a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , he was professor of nuclear chemistry and chemical engineering at MIT between 1955 and 1959 . At that time he was a member of the founding staff of General Atomics until 1959 and in 1958 wrote the textbook Nuclear Chemical Engineering together with Manson Benedict .

He then became a founding professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1959 , where he taught until his retirement in 1991. During this time, he was also three times head of the department of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Pigford, who was also a co-founder and Fellow of the American Nuclear Society and a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers , became a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1976 . In 1981 he was awarded the John Wesley Powell Award from the US Geological Survey .

As a recognized expert in nuclear and chemical engineering, Pigford was finally a member of the commission of inquiry into the accidents and incidents at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986 and Hanford Site, as well as for the assessment of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository .

personal data
SURNAME	Pigford, Thomas H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Pigford, Thomas Harrington (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American chemical engineer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH	April 21, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH	Meridian , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH	February 27, 2010
Place of death	Oakland , California