Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, I went to college on a music scholarship. After one semester I left college and joined a rock and roll band. Eventually, I realized my musical capabilities were limited, so I returned to school. I received a Scholarship from Westinghouse to Marshall University and received my BS in Physics in 1981. Enrolling at the University of Kentucky, I was able to apply for and receive a research assistantship in Professor Peter Eklund’s laboratories where I began conducting research involving the optical and structural properties of materials. In addition to my dissertation research topic on graphite intercalation compounds, I was fortunate to collaborate on other materials such as the search for charge density waves in potassium with Prof. Albert W. Oberhauser (Purdue University), metal insulator phase transitions in vanadium sesquioxide with Prof. Jurgen Honig (Purdue University), and doped polyacetylene with Prof. Alan MacDiarmid (University of Pennsylvania). The research publication with Prof. MacDiarmid was one of several on conductive polymers that led to his Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000. Publication of elastic and inelastic neutron spectroscopy studies I performed at the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory led to a NATO Scholarship to present these findings at a conference in Erice, Italy. At this conference, I was approached by Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus who offered me a postdoctoral fellowship in Physics (Course 8) in her group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology following my anticipated graduation from the University of Kentucky in 1986.

My research at MIT was initially designed to investigate the possibility of magnetic phase transitions in layered materials, or a Kosterlitz-Thouless type transition where a magnetic phase transition (albeit with a diverging correlation length) could occur at some finite temperature in 2D systems. However, Bednorz and Müller were awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering high-temperature superconductivity in ceramic materials, which led to excitement within the physics community, especially so at the March meeting of the American Physical Society in New York City. Because of the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, much of my research transitioned to superconducting copper oxide ceramics. Our group had several notable contributions to the field, including the experimental determination of the infrared-active phonons in the lanthanum cuprate system, theoretical energies and symmetries of the lattice vibrations in several cuprate materials using group theory, and the first measurement of electron-phonon relaxation rates in Sr-doped Lanthanum Cuprate using transient thermal reflectance spectroscopy. I was sometimes tasked with teaching Prof. Dresselhaus’ group theory course and during one class an assignment was given to calculate the vibrational symmetries of a truncated icosahedron, or a polyhedron with 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons. This homework assignment (with some refinements) led to the first publication on the vibrational symmetries of C60, or the buckyball. As my postdoctoral fellowship was to end in 1989, I received employment offers from two universities, two national laboratories, and two industrial laboratories. Much to the disappointment of Prof. Dresselhaus, I did not choose academia but instead chose to join the Physics Department at the General Motors Research (GMR) Laboratories in Warren, Michigan.

Not unexpectedly, my materials research activities at GMR became more applied although mostly derived from and associated with fundamental studies performed at UK and MIT. For example, the experience garnered on the carbon system at UK enabled discoveries and patents in boron nitride, a system that is isostructural with carbon, while the C60 work conducted at MIT contributed to the development of a carbon nanotube system patented and utilized as Pyrograf. During this time at GMR, I began exploring the synthesis and properties of carbon and hydrogenated carbon films, specifically diamond and diamondlike materials. The proposed application for diamond was as a thermal sink for high-temperature semiconductors whereas diamondlike films showed promise as wear-resistant coatings for steel components such as gears and bearings. When General Motors divested its device subsidiary, all efforts transitioned to diamondlike films for wear-resistance. While at GMR, I maintained academic relationships by becoming adjunct faculty and dissertation directors at the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, Wayne State University, and North Carolina State University. I also began teaching evening graduate courses in Physics at Oakland University, specifically Electromagnetic Fields and Waves and Mathematical Methods for Physicists.

When General Motors decided to eliminate the Research Laboratories in 1996, I moved to Canton, Ohio and joined Timken Research, which primarily resulted from a joint NIST program on Surface Engineering that General Motors had with the Caterpillar Company and the Timken Company. At Timken, my diamondlike carbon research area transitioned into the larger field of tribology, which had developed from applications instead of fundamental science or physics. The niche that I created for myself was to incorporate materials science and physics into basic tribological phenomena. Some headway in this was made at Timken and resulted in me being elected as a Fellow of ASM International in 2009. These efforts continued after I accepted the Timken Endowed Chair in the College of Engineering at the University of Akron in 2010.

In the 11 years that I spent at the University of Akron, I graduated 12 PhD students, 10 MS students, and taught graduate and undergraduate courses in materials science while conducting government- and industry-funded research in tribological fundamentals. In 2016, I became a Fellow of the Society for Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers and was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Fellowship. I have had the opportunity to lecture at universities in Brazil, England, Morocco, China, and the US. Over my career I have published over 300 articles and book chapters, edited numerous proceedings, and received more than 29 Patents.

I retired from the University of Akron at the end of 2021, became Emeritus, and my wife Marilynn and I moved to Estero, Florida. In retirement I have published one book “Rolling Bearing Tribology” and am editing the third edition of another, and am keeping myself busy with consulting, my Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, and playing in a Rock and Roll band.