Kent Peaslee, 1956–2013
The materials science community is interdependent, so the ceramics community shares the sorrow of the steel industry on hearing of the untimely death of Kent Peaslee, a steel metallurgy professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Peaslee died May 17 at the age of 56.
Peaslee was 2012-2013 president of the Association for Iron and Steel Technology—one of ACerS’ founding partner societies for the annual Materials Science & Technology conference. According to the university website, he was a Curators’ Teaching Professor and Iverson Chair. Before joining the faculty at Missouri S&T, Peaslee worked 13 years in the steel industry. His research interests spanned waste and metals recycling, steelmaking, inclusion engineering, continuous casting, steel manufacturing energy optimization, metal-refractory interactions, and environmental aspects of metals manufacturing.
I met Peaslee for the first time at the March St. Louis/Refractory Ceramics Division meeting. He impressed me as warm, smart, friendly, and passionate about the steel industry. He will be missed by many in the materials science and engineering community, his MS&T colleagues; Mary, his wife of 35 years; and their three children and their families.