Retirement dinner to honor Peter Harriott, hands-on teacher, writer, author

By David Brand

Peter Harriott, the Fred H. Rhodes Professor of Chemical Engineering since 1975, is retiring after 48 years of teaching and research at Cornell. A retirement dinner is being held in his honor on Friday, Oct. 12, at La Tourelle, in Ithaca, with nearly 100 people expected to attend.

As part of its tribute to Harriott, the School of Chemical Engineering is establishing the Peter Harriott Fund to provide financial aid for students doing environmental research. Over the years, Harriott has advised 34 M.S. and Ph.D. students and has developed six new graduate courses.

It was in 1949 that Harriott completed the five-year B.Chem.E. degree at Cornell. In 1952, he earned his Sc.D. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then worked for the General Electric Co. on the production of silanes and silicone polymers.

He joined the Cornell faculty in September 1953. Over the years, his research interests have encompassed kinetics and reactor design, air pollution control, process control, and heat and mass transfer. He also published one of the first control texts written for chemical engineers, Process Control. He is the co-author of the fourth, fifth and sixth editions of Unit Operation of Chemical Engineering, with Julian Smith, emeritus professor of chemical engineering. Harriott currently is working on another book, Chemical Reactor Design.

During his career at Cornell, Harriott has gained practical experience by working for several petroleum and chemical companies, including Monsanto and American Cyanamid, on sabbaticals, during summers and as a consultant. This hands-on industrial experience enabled him to give a practical flavor to his courses in kinetics and reactor design, process control and separations.

In 1966 he received a National Science Foundation senior postdoctoral fellowship for study at the Institute for Catalysis, Lyon, France, and in 1998, he received both a Department of Energy fellowship award and the College of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award.

Harriott and his wife, the former Mary Lou White, have five sons, four of whom have attended Cornell. Harriott's personal interests include woodworking, choral singing and maintaining hiking trails with the Cayuga Trails Club.

Those who want to attend the retirement dinner or to contribute to the Peter Harriott Fund should contact Miriam Ackley at 255-4258 or ma55@cornell.edu.