Paul W. Murrill
Louisiana State University

Paul Murrill received his B.S. in chemical engineering from Ole Miss in 1956. After a brief career in the U.S. Navy, he returned to graduate school earning his M.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1963) in chemical engineering from Louisiana State University. He served as a professor and as a university administrator (including Chancellor) for LSU until 1981. He then spent a decade in industry, including serving as Chairman and CEO of Gulf States Utilities Company (now Entergy), until his retirement in 1991.

Paul Murrill grew up in rural Mississippi.  His father was legally blind and he sewed brooms for a modest living.  He never made the equivalent of the minimum wage, but he found great satisfaction in his work and was quite proud of the fact that he could support his family. When Paul went into Pocahontas to attend school, he entered a school that offered K-12 with a total enrollment of 17 students.  In time, the schools were “consolidated” and he found himself at the end of the longest school bus route in the county.

Paul attended the University of Mississippi on a Naval ROTC scholarship.  He chose to study chemical engineering because of three factors – he understood well enough to earn a living, he enjoyed chemistry, and he recalled the chance remark of a high school teacher that he was not good enough in math to be an engineer.

At Ole Miss Paul encountered Dr. Frank Anderson who was in the process of creating a department of chemical engineering.  In Frank Anderson he found a dedicated teacher, a mentor, a friend, and a hero.  Paul graduated with a BS in Chemical Engineering in 1956, and immediately went to sea as an officer in the US Navy.  He enjoyed sea duty and his engineering duties aboard ship, and becoming qualified as an Officer-of-the-Deck (Underway) was one of the more satisfying events of his life.

Upon release from active duty in 1959, Paul married Nancy Hoover Williams of Lexington, MS who had graduated from Ole Miss with a BA in history in 1957.  Their first home was in Lake Charles, Louisiana where Paul was employed as a process engineer with the Columbia Southern Chemical Corporation.  Paul enjoyed his work but found doing multi-component distillation calculations on a mechanical calculator to be less than satisfying.   Paul became determined to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Frank Anderson, and become a teacher.

Paul and Nancy moved to Baton Rouge in 1960 for Paul to enter graduate school, and they have lived near LSU ever since.  They have three sons, and six grandsons with a 7^th grandchild expected in August.

Professionally, Paul became an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at LSU in 1963, and was made Department Head in 1967.  Paul fell in love with process control, computers, and applied mathematics.  He was an active teacher, researcher, and author (including a role in 13 textbooks).  He loved the maturity of the students and he began to see chemical engineering as a pathway to “disciplined understanding” – and in time he also came to see disciplined understanding as both the process and the goal of teaching. 

Paul became a university administrator and served five years as LSU’s Provost, seven years as Chancellor of the Baton Rouge campus of LSU, and then he retired from LSU in 1981. 

After LSU, Paul spent a decade in industry, first a brief stint as Head of R&D for the Ethyl Corporation (during which time he came to realize that he was a very a poor chemist) and then as Chairman and CEO of Gulf States Utilities Company.  By the time of his retirement in 1991, it was clear that Paul would never practice engineering again.  But those days of disciplined understanding would serve him well, whether as an administrator, manager, director, or whatever.

Paul has focused much of his time and energies in recent years serving as a Director of numerous public company boards. At one time or another he has served on the boards of 9 different companies listed on the NYSE and 6 different companies listed on the NASDAQ.  In addition, he has devoted a major part of his time and energy to the public good, serving on nonprofit boards, teaching a Sunday school class, heading a foundation, and giving one day a week for six years in helping an order of nuns.

Paul still takes great satisfaction in being a chemical engineer, thinks it a wonderful and flexible profession, is optimistic for the future of the profession, and encourages young people to give the study of chemical engineering their serious consideration.