On the face of it, I should write this letter about Paul Shewmon in the third person. But that is simply not possible. Not by design nor at all times, his life and mine (and my family's) became so intellectually, and at times personally, intertwined that such a narrative would become zombie-like, form disembodied from spirit, so it will be a soliloquy instead. For better or for worse, Paul profoundly influenced me for much of my adult life, for which I am grateful and from which I have benefitted over the years, especially as regards his penchant for intellectual discipline and honesty; lay down your lantern Diogenes for in Paul there was the honest man, and he will be sorely missed. His supporters, of whom there were a great many, saw him as a champion of rational and meritorious behaviour and humour. Bill Shack, who worked with Paul at Argonne National Laboratory in the 70's, upon learning of Paul's death, wrote in an email that, 'even 40 years later he is still a legend at Argonne'. His detractors, of whom there were a few, generally saw his steely affectation with these virtues as threatening to self- aggrandizement, and political ambition & orthodoxy; occasionally leading to a quarrelsome demeanor.

I've known Paul for 51 years, since 1964, having met him first as a new graduate student at an informal, pre-semester gathering of new students and faculty at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, where he had been a faculty member since ca 1958; reputedly, either then or very shortly thereafter as I recall, he was/became the youngest full professor in Materials Science & Engineering (formerly Metallurgy) history. I believe he was 35 at that time when I met him in 1964, 12 years older than me. I think he did his undergraduate work at the University of Illinois, working with Fred Rhines, and his graduate work at Carnegie Tech. He did a short stint at Westinghouse Laboratories in Pittsburgh working with Clarence Zener, an accomplished solid-state physicist. By that time Paul had written the first of, I believe, 2 books entitled, "Diffusion in Solids". It was an excellent, comprehensible treatise on the subject and won him considerable and deserved acclaim. His second book came perhaps 13 or so years later and was on the subject of phase transformations in solids. These two fields, diffusion and phase transformations in solids were of special interest to Paul throughout his professional life.

Paul had the reputation of being a good head and getting his students through the graduate program expeditiously. We seemed to hit it off so I subsequently became one of his students. As I recall, I was one of three students Paul adopted from that 1964 class; Lothar Willertz, John Tien and myself. I know the names of and met only two of Paul's earlier students, Tim Wilson and Henry Collins. Perhaps there were others, I don't recall. Paul was well-respected as a teacher, and his students did well in the main. Paul left Carnegie in 1967 to join Argonne National Laboratory as associate director of the Metallurgy Division (or perhaps it was Materials Science Division by that time). About a year later I was finishing at Carnegie with a surrogate advisor, Jim Foster, and Paul asked if I would join the team he was building at Argonne in support of breeder reactor development for nuclear power generation, which was in great favor at the time. I agreed and was pleased to join quite a team of talented scientists & engineers (a 'band of brothers' so to speak) many of whom were there through the good offices of Paul; Dick Weeks, Sam Harkness, Roger Poeppel, CY Li, Bill Shack, Ken Natesan, Tom Kassner, Brian Frost, Norman Peterson, Fred Kochs, Ron Scattergood, Art Turner, Fred Nichols, Hartmut Wiedersich and many others whose names escape my memory. In

time, the Division director, Mike Nevitt, was promoted to Deputy Laboratory Director and Paul was promoted to Division Director. It was a time, the mid-to-late 70s, when the breeder program was in decline, and many other government research programs fell into political disfavor as well. The mood at Argonne was somber and Paul, like many at the time, left the laboratory. He went to Washington DC as one of the rotating directors of the Materials Science Division at the National Science Foundation, and in 1979 was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. About this time he also joined the ACRS, Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety, a technical advisory committee on nuclear reactor safety to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Upon leaving NSF, Paul joined the Ohio State University as Professor & head of the Metallurgy & Ceramics Department from which he retired perhaps 25 or so years ago.

Frank Nolfi