J. Larry Duda
Penn State University

Larry Duda readily admits that his extraordinary career as a researcher and educator was not by design.

“My career, I never had consciously planned,” says Duda, a professor of chemical engineering at Penn State. “These decisions you do with limited knowledge. I always went where I enjoyed it.”

For Duda, the road to becoming a successful researcher and teacher wasn’t smooth at the beginning. Hailing from a blue-collar, western Pennsylvania town where steel was king, Duda’s likeliest opportunity to leave his native Donora was an athletic scholarship. Most of the men in the Duda family attended college through football scholarships, but Larry wasn’t able to make high school football team, the Dragons.

He instead earned a scholarship to the Case Institute of Technology and decided to major in chemical engineering. Duda credits his high school chemistry teacher as the biggest influence in his choice of discipline.

Still, things weren’t easy in college. “I never did well on standardized tests,” he recalls of his academic struggles. It would be years before Duda was diagnosed with dyslexia, a condition which always hampered but never stopped his progression through college.

In pursuing chemical engineering, Duda finally began hitting his stride. “In the weed out course, I had the best grade in the class,” he says of his initial stoichiometry course. “I was meant to be a chemical engineer.”

The young Duda found that he had a knack for problem solving and excelled in stoichiometry. Though he graduated from Case with his degree, Duda felt his education wasn’t complete. He set his sights on an advanced degree and went on to the University of Delaware.

At Delaware, Duda flourished. “I really came into my own as a graduate researcher.” For Duda, the appeal of research is the “mistakes” which occur during the course of investigation.

In 1963, in Midland, MI, with Ph.D. in hand, Duda joined Dow Chemical’s Process Fundamentals Group. It was here when he and other engineers pioneered many of the advancements in made in polymer science. Duda, along with Jim Vrentas, focused on the problems associated with polymer production and processing. Duda was also instrumental in the realization of the trans-Alaskan pipeline. He helped to design the pipeline’s insulation system, which featured a latent-heat-storage component to prevent the pipeline from melting the permafrost during Alaska’s short summer.

A desire to keep researching led Duda to Penn State in 1971. “I always felt if academia didn’t work out, I could always go back to Dow.”

At Penn State, Duda maintained his focus on molecular diffusion in polymers with industrial applications. He continued to collaborate with his longtime colleague Vrentas, developing the free volume theory that explains how the viscous behavior of polymer melts is coupled to the diffusional behavior in binary solutions. The duo also created experimental techniques and associated analyses for the determination of accurate diffusivity data over the wide ranges of temperature and concentrations needed for various polymer processes.

Further, Duda teamed up with Elmer Klaus to develop a micro-reactor technique to study the thermal and oxidative degradation of lubricants under conditions that simulate automotive engine tests, heavy-duty diesel engine performance, electrical power generating equipment, and gas turbine engines. The test is widely used to reduce costly engine tests and has been successfully utilized to examine the performance of lubricant additives as well as the catalytic effects of metal surfaces on lubricant degradation. The collaboration with Klaus also resulted in a novel lubricant delivery system for use at elevated temperatures.

Though he spent more than three decades at Penn State’s Department of Chemical Engineering and served as department head for seventeen years, Duda stumbled into a second passion: teaching.

“I made the move [from Dow] mainly because I wanted to do research. I found teaching was more exciting, which surprised me,” he says. “I didn’t realize how important teaching became to me.”

Duda found that he could meld his research with his teaching, incorporating case studies and other aspects of his work into his class. In conversations with colleagues, he often admits that given a choice, he’d rather give up researching than teaching.

“For some people, they talk about teaching as part of the ‘workload.’ It’s not viewed by some as part of the real job,” Duda observes. “For some, teaching is a necessary evil. But for me, if I had to give up the teaching or the research, I think I’d give up the research even though I got into academia for the research.”

During his career, Duda advised more than 70 master’s candidates and more than 45 doctoral candidates, and served on countless committees. His graduate advisees came from a number of disciplines, including chemical engineering, chemistry, polymer science, petroleum engineering, mineral processing, agricultural engineering, fuel science, and bioengineering.

Duda has had numerous achievements over the years, winning many awards, including the Penn State Engineering Society’s Outstanding Research Award and Premier Research Award, the American Society of Engineering Educators Chemical Engineering Lectureship Award, and ExxonMobil’s E.V. Murphee Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. He and Vrentas were also honored with the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ (AIChE) William H. Walker Award for their work on molecular diffusion in polymers and the analysis of complex transport phenomena and the Charles M.A. Stine Award in Materials Engineering and Sciences from the AIChE Materials Division.

As department head, Duda steered the chemical engineering program into new research areas, including biotechnology, the life sciences, new materials, and computer simulations. He also raised the department’s profile nationally and helped it gain recognition in U.S. News & World Report.

He says the field will continue evolving into new areas, such as nanotechnology, but worries about the fragmentation of chemical engineering into a series of “mini disciplines.” Duda says he’s also concerned that future chemical engineers won’t receive some of the fundamentals previous generations benefited from.

“There really isn’t funding for traditional stuff,” he says. “We’re getting to the point where future young faculty might not be able to teach older courses, such as on distillation, for example.”

In retrospect, Duda says he has only one real regret about his long career. “Looking back on it, I wish I made the move to academia earlier,” he laughs. “I always say the best job at the University is a tenured professor!”

Larry Duda passed away on September 24, 2006.