Dartmouth Engineer

Professor Kantrowitz, left, with Rob Wills Th'83. Photograph by Nancy Wasserman.

Thayer School Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, Arthur Kantrowitz died of heart failure on Saturday, November 29, 2008, in New York City. He was 95.

Kantrowitz came to Thayer as professor and senior lecturer in 1978. Previously he taught aeronautical engineering and engineering physics at Cornell and founded Avco Everett Research Laboratory. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at Columbia; held 21 patents; served on advisory boards to the Ford White House, the Department of Commerce, NASA, the General Accounting Office, and the National Science Foundation; was a member of numerous scientific organizations; and was a recipient of the Roosevelt Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service in Science.

Kantrowitz’s wide-ranging research included one of the first attempts at controlled nuclear fusion in 1938, magnetohydrodynamic generators, rocket nose cones able to withstand the heat of re-entry into the atmosphere, and the intra-aortic balloon pump [see Inventions] that has been used in hundreds of thousands of patients.

He was passionate about the roles of academia and the scientific community in the public perception of technology. He advocated for a “science court” to provide reliable information about the scope and limitations of scientific knowledge.

An obituary in The New York Times noted that he “never lost his faith in science and in humanity’s ability to solve its problems.”

He is survived by his wife, Lee Stuart of Hanover; three daughters, Barbara, Lore, and Andrea; and six grandchildren.

For more photos, visit our Faculty and Instructors Flickr page.

Toomas Laaspere

Toomas Laaspere, 81, died June 10 in Hanover. Born in Estonia, he left his homeland when Russia invaded it in 1944. He spent five years in P.O.W. and displaced person camps in Germany and Belgium before working at a refugee organization in Germany. He came to the U.S. in 1951 to study electrical engineering at the University of Vermont and then earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Cornell. He taught at Thayer School from 1961 to 1989. During that time, he worked on radiophysics with Professor Millett Morgan, carrying out research on wave propagation related to geophysical phenomena. Working on whistlers — audio-frequency radio waves produced by lightning and the aurora — Laaspere and Morgan designed and fabricated satellite sensing devices launched by NASA in the 1960s. An early promoter of energy conservation, during the 1970s Laaspere advocated for efficient generation, distribution, and use of electricity, including technologies for load leveling and electric heat storage.

Laaspere is survived by his wife of 53 years, Suzanne Champagne, his sister, three children, and two grandchildren.

For more photos of professors past and present, visit our Faculty Flickr page.

Professor John W. Strohbehn. Photograph courtesy of the Strohbehn family

John W. Strohbehn, “father of bioengineering” at Thayer School, died in Hanover on February 22 after a long illness.

During 31 years on the Thayer faculty, Strohbehn established his name in radiophysics, then turned his attention to bioengineering, developing extensive collaborations with Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Honoring his dedication to biomedical engineering, DMS annually awards a medical student the John W. Strohbehn Medal for Excellence in Biomedical Research.

Strohbehn served as provost of Dartmouth from 1987 to 1993 and at Duke University from 1994 to 1999. He was a founding fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Optical Society of America. In 1988 he and DHMC neurosurgeon Dr. David Roberts co-patented a groundbreaking frameless stereotactic operating microscope. In 1991 he received the Eugene Robinson Award for outstanding contributions to hyperthermic oncology. He authored more than 100 papers on electromagnetic wave propagation effects and the engineering aspects of hyperthermia.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara; sister Barbara; children Jo, Kris, and Carolyn; and five grandchildren.

See “Tribute” for more on Strohbehn.