PASADENA, Calif. -- One way to measure how well educational institutions educate their students is to note what kind of mark their alumni make in the real world. Each year since 1966 the Alumni Association of the California Institute of Technology has acknowledged those graduates who have attained extraordinary achievement in business, their community, and in their professional life.
This year, six graduates--leaders in science, industry, and academia--have been selected to receive the Institute's Distinguished Alumni Award. The awards will be presented at a ceremony on Saturday, May 15, during Caltech's annual Alumni Reunion Weekend and Seminar Day.
The Distinguished Alumni are M. Blouke Carus (BS '49, electrical engineering), Narendra (Naren) Gupta (MS '70, aeronautics), Kenneth Kellermann (PhD '63, physics), Robert Kirshner (PhD '75, astronomy), Gerhard Parker (BS '65, engineering, MS '66, electrical engineering, PhD '70, electrical engineering), and H. Gerard Schwartz Jr. (PhD '66, civil engineering).
M. Blouke Carus is the chairman of Carus Corporation, a holding company that owns Carus Chemical Company. Based in Peru, Illinois, Carus Chemical is a provider of chemicals and services for water and wastewater treatment, air purification, and other environmental applications. The company is also one of the world's largest manufacturers of potassium permanganate, which is used to "oxidize" soluble manganese and iron in drinking water so they can be removed by filtration. If these compounds were left untreated, they would cause staining of plumbing fixtures and impart a bad taste to the water.
Carus is also the chairman of Carus Publishing Company, which produces educational materials, most notably a research-based reading and writing program for children in grades K through six. The publisher produces a basic reading curriculum that is used extensively in California.
Narendra (Naren) Gupta is the co-founder of Integrated Systems Inc., which later merged with another company to form Wind River, the dominant maker of software for such diverse computing devices as airplane radar systems and DVD players. He now serves as vice chairman of that company. Gupta also serves on the boards of a number of companies, including the Digital Link Corporation, a data communications and wide-area networking equipment manufacturer, TIBCO Software, Quick Eagle Networks, and the American India Foundation. Gupta was elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in November 1991.
A radio astronomer, Kenneth Kellermann is a senior scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), a research professor at the University of Virginia, and an outside scientific member of the Max Planck Society. He has been affiliated with NRAO since 1965, serving for a period of time as the observatory's assistant director. Kellermann's research interests include radio galaxies and quasars, the history of radio astronomy, and the development of new instrumentation for radio astronomy. His work has been recognized with such awards as the Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society and the Gould Prize of the National Academy of Sciences. Kellermann is a member of the International Astronomical Union, the American Astronomical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The author of the book The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos, Robert Kirshner has also written more than 200 research papers about supernovae, the large-scale distribution of galaxies, and the size and shape of the universe. After postdoctoral work at Kitt Peak National Observatory and a stint at the University of Michigan, Kirshner joined the faculty at Harvard University, where he is the Clowes Professor of Science, and served as chairman of the astronomy department for seven years. He was also associate director for optical and infrared astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics from 1997 to 2003. Kirshner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and is currently serving as president of the American Astronomical Society.
Gerhard Parker earned all three of his degrees at Caltech. After his long residence at the Institute, he joined Intel Corporation as a member of the technical staff. In 1977 he was named vice president and director of technology development, and in 1988 became senior vice president in charge of manufacturing, technology development, purchasing, construction, quality, and planning. In this latter position, Parker managed Intel's worldwide expansion of production capacity in the early 1990s. He served as executive vice president for the new business group beginning in 1998, guiding numerous internal start-ups, until his retirement in 2001.
H. Gerard Schwartz Jr. has had a long and distinguished career with the Sverdrup Corporation, which is now a part of Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. His work was instrumental in developing and expanding Sverdrup into a national leader in construction management. Schwartz's projects included multibillion-dollar water and wastewater treatment systems for the cities of San Diego, San Francisco, and Detroit. He also worked as principal-in-charge for large civil-infrastructure projects, such as highways, bridges, dams, and railroads. In 1993, Schwartz was named president and chairman of Jacobs/Sverdrup Civil Inc., and he is currently a senior professor of civil and environmental engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He has served as president of the Water Environment Federation and was president of the American Society of Civil Engineers from 2001 to 2002. Schwartz was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997.
At the ceremony, the six recipients will receive an engraved pewter Tiffany bowl and a framed certificate. In addition, their names will be placed on a plaque at the Caltech Alumni House alongside the names of all past recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award.
