Dr. Rowland M. Cannon, Jr., ’66, Sc.D. ’75, passed away after a heart attack on April 21, 2006, in Berkeley, CA. Dr. Cannon, a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was well-known in the field of materials science, both for his breadth and depth of knowledge and for his good humor and deep friendships. Prior to working at LBNL, Dr. Cannon held a faculty position in our department (1975--1982), and he spent February 2006 at MIT as the first W.D. Kingery Distinguished Visitor. During this visit, he gave formal seminars on “Structure-Composition Existence Regimes for Grain Boundaries: Opportunities for Science and Exploitation,” and met informally with many in DMSE.
His work was rewarded with numerous honors, including the American Ceramic Society’s award for paper of the year (1991), being named an ACS Fellow (1994), receiving the Ross Coffin Purdy Award and Sosman Memorial Lectureship (1997) from the American Ceramic Society (ACerS), and earning a Humboldt Foundation research award (1999--2000). The impact of his research in the thermodynamics, processing, and structural properties of ceramics was extraordinary; in recognition of this, an ACerS symposium was held in his honor on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. During the symposium, his colleagues and friends praised his creativity while roasting him for his disregard for deadlines, schedules, and conventional thinking; he received the praise and the teasing gracefully. He had recently been working with numerous groups around the world on the character, stability, and properties of interfaces for ceramics and their role in microstructure development and mechanical behavior; this included the formation and adherence of ceramic-metal interfaces, wetting, interface mechanics, and kinetic behavior. Indeed, throughout his career, he was known for his profound understanding and insight into the mechanical behavior and microstructure evolution in ceramics.
The Basic Science Division of the American Ceramics Society is organizing “The Science of Ceramic Interfaces: An International Symposium Memorializing Dr. Rowland M. Cannon” in 2008; the symposium is devoted to the fundamental aspects of interfaces and how they control properties and behavior in ceramics.
Dr. Cannon loved outdoor activities and was proud to have summitted Pico de Orizaba, the third highest peak in North America, to have completed the Hilly Hundred bicycle tour in Bloomington, Indiana, and to have traversed southern France and Spain on bike expeditions. He was a free thinker, an eclectic reader, a devout contrarian, and a provocative conversationalist.