Donald Uhlmann

Prof. Donald Uhlmann‘s education in physics at Ivy League universities started at Yale and continued during his Ph.D. and post-doctoral days at Harvard. His professional career began in 1965 when he was hired as a faculty by the department of materials science and engineering at MIT, where he worked for over two decades. Prof. Uhlmann moved to the University of Arizona in 1986, where he is still working as a part-time professor of materials and optical sciences. Along his 50 plus years of professional experience, Dr. Uhlmann has been an outstanding instructor in courses in glass science, biomaterials, the technology of polymers, ceramics, and composites (my wife and I have attended several of his classes). In these 5 decades, he supervised many Ph.D. students who became renowned researchers as, for instance, George Scherer, Lisa Klein, Tom Seward, and John McCloy, just to name a few that have been very active in the ACerS.

Don Uhlmann is the author or co-author of over 300 papers in scientific journals, dozens of articles in conference proceedings and book chapters, co-editor of 13 books – including two editions of the famous “Introduction to Ceramics,” one of essential books in ceramic science, and inventor on more than 20 patents.

His non-academic experience includes numerous high-level administrative and consulting activities: head of the materials science and engineering department of the U of A, consultant to numerous companies, director of companies with annual revenues of tens of millions to a billion U.S. dollars, chairman of advisory committees to NASA, member of several NAS-NMAB committees, associate editor and member of the editorial advisory board of scientific journals, member of the Insulating Glass Certification Council, chairman of a Gordon Conference on glass, chairman of the GOMD, Trustee of the American Ceramic Society, Trustee of the Ernst Abbe Fund Foundation.

For these relevant research and administrative activities, he has received significant honors and awards: A Festschrift organized by ACerS-GOMD in 2016, Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, Member of the World Academy of Ceramics, and Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, U.K. Society of Glass Technology and Guggenheim Foundation. He was also honored by the ACerS with the F. H. Norton Award, George W. Morey Award, and Sosman Lecturer.