James Samuel Owens

Abstract

James Samuel Owens, an optical spectroscopist, ceramic scientist, and industrial manager, died in Venice, Florida, on 26 October 2000 of congestive heart failure.Owens was born on 27 March 1908 in McKinney, Kentucky, and raised in the nearby town of Hustonville. He earned a BS degree in physics from the University of Chattanooga in 1928 and then began graduate studies in physics at the University of Wisconsin, where he worked as a research assistant to L. R. Ingersoll from 1928 to 1929.Owens considered transferring to electrical engineering, so he spent the summer of 1929 working for Western Electric in Chicago. Having decided that he preferred physics, he then accepted a research assistantship at the University of Michigan, earning his MS (1930) and PhD (1932) degrees in physics there. His doctoral thesis was entitled “The Quenching of Mercury Resonance Radiation by Hydrogen, Carbon Monoxide, and Nitrogen.” His thesis adviser was O. S. Duffendack, who remained a lifelong friend and mentor.From 1933 to 1939, Owens was a research physicist at the Dow Chemical Co in Midland, Michigan, where he worked in optics, spectrochemical analysis, and photochemistry and reported to J. Donald Hanawalt. From 1939 to 1943, Owens was assistant chief chemist with the Armstrong Cork Co in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using spectroscopic techniques to study glass chemistry.Returning to the University of Michigan, he worked from 1943 to 1946 for Duffendack as chief technical aide in the infrared section of the National Defense Research Committee, Office of Scientific Research and Development. Owens was responsible for developing infrared equipment and systems for the detection of personnel, vehicles, and ships, and also for communication. For this work, carried out in industrial and university laboratories across the country, he received the Presidential Certificate of Merit from President Harry S Truman (in 1948).Owens joined Ohio State University in 1945 as a professor of physics and as executive director of the university’s Research Foundation in Columbus. As executive director, he was responsible for carrying out, in the university’s departments and colleges, the research programs sponsored by industries and government agencies.In 1951, he moved to Detroit to join the Champion Spark Plug Co as assistant to the manager of the ceramic division. He was named general manager of the division in 1954 and was elected a vice president of the company in 1971. Owens retired in 1973, but remained active in the Engineering Society of Detroit and the Detroit Section of the Society of Automotive Engineers until 1982, when he and his wife moved to Florida.Owens was president (1974–75) of the Metropolitan Detroit Science and Engineering Fair, president (1973–74) of the Engineering Society of Detroit; president (1967–68) of the American Ceramic Society; and president (1965–66) of the International Association of Torch Clubs. He was also a Kentucky Colonel. This recognition, which particularly pleased him, was granted by the governor of his home state. He was the inventor or coinventor on 11 patents. Owens thought like a physicist and taught others the excitement of quantitatively understanding the natural world and the operation of complex systems, even though his own career was not primarily in research. Rather, he organized and guided the engineering and manufacturing skills of others to produce many kinds of useful and practical ceramic materials and devices. James Samuel Owens PPT|High resolution© 2001 American Institute of Physics.