Obituary of Donald Hornig (1920-2013)

Donald Hornig, a chemist who had a long and distinguished research and administrative career has passed away after a battle with Alzheimer’s.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he attended Harvard University for both his undergraduate and doctoral degrees. Following completion of his Ph.D., he began working at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the Underwater Explosives Laboratory before becoming a group leader in the Manhattan Project where he worked on the firing unit that initiated the implosion of the plutonium device.

Following the end of World War II, he served on the faculty of Brown University from 1946-1957 as a professor and dean. From 1957 he taught at Princeton University and served as the chair of the chemistry department. At the same time, he also served on the President’s Science Advisory Committee for both President Dwight Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Kennedy appointed Hornig as a presidential science advisor, an office he held from 1964-1969, before accepting an executive position at Eastman Kodak and returning to Brown University as the school’s president. While there he oversaw and austerity program to bring the school back to budget, but also put into place the foundation that led to the establishment of Brown’s medical school. In 1976 moved to Harvard’s School of Public Health, where he remained until his retirement in 1990 after also serving as the school’s chairman of the Department of Environmental Health.

Hornig was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He was a recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship.