Obituary of Paul O. Schissel

Paul O. Schissel died on December 28th, 2006 in Wheatridge, CO after a short illness. Paul distinguished himself as a researcher on a wide range of scientific projects and as a professor of physics. A devoted husband and wonderful father, he is survived by his wife of 54 years, Freda, his son, David, and granddaughter, Carly of San Diego, CA. He enjoyed tennis as a tournament player and spectator throughout his life. Paul greatly enjoyed the broad spectrum of science he encountered in projects during his 37 years of experience after earning his doctorate in chemical physics at the U. Chicago in 1956.

Paul was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on 13 October 1924. After graduating from high school in 1943, he earned his B.S. in physics in 1947 from Purdue University. After working at the General Electric Laboratories in Schenectady New York from 1947—1951, he attended the University of Chicago and was awarded an M. S. in physics in 1952 and the doctorate in 1956. He immediately joined the chemical physics group at the Parma Research Laboratories, Union Carbide Corporation, Parma, Ohio and in 1963 accepted a transfer to their corporate research laboratory in Tarrytown, New York where he served until 1974. From 1975 1979, he was Professor of Physics at Pace University. From 1979 through 1993, Paul was a senior and then principal polymer scientist at the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), Golden Colorado, which became the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in 1991. Paul worked well in many settings as an individual researcher, as a member of team projects, and as a team leader.

At the University of Chicago and Union Carbide, his principal instrumental work was with mass spectrometers including field ion mass spectrometry (FIMS) long before Professor Jochen Block of the Fritz-Haber-Institute in Berlin, Germany popularized it. His technical contributions included working with radio frequency spectrometers that led to the concept of utilizing a hyperbolic, electrostatic field as a basis for a quadrupole-type mass spectrometer (GE, First Patent). At Union Carbide, he used mass spectrometry for various novel studies of the high temperature chemistry of materials including vaporization coefficients with constant-boiling systems as calibrators. Dr. Schissel used FIMS to discover the existence of polymer water ions [(H3O+ ·(H2O)n] in which n is an integer. He also studied the low-pressure oxidation of tungsten and defined the pressure-temperature dependence of the vapor products. As part of a massive team effort for elucidating the mechanism of the epoxidation of ethylene to ethylene oxide on silver catalysts, he demonstrated with elegant FIMS studies that a threshold pressure of oxygen is required before the epoxidation occurs. While in charge of an analytical instrumentation facility (XPS, ISS, ion microprobes, gas chromatographs, and mass spectrometry) at Tarrytown, Paul made fundamental studies of the low pressure, rapid pyrolysis of reactive organic radical like species including observing directly the theoretically important cyclobutadiene structure.

At SERI/NREL, Paul developed membranes for separating ethanol-water mixtures, which resulted in his second patent (pervaporation of ethanol-water mixtures). His most significant contributions were related to developing reflector [primarily silver/polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and polyacrylo-nitrile (PAN)] materials for membrane mirrors for use with central receiver (power tower), parabolic trough, and other concentrating solar energy technologies. Under his leadership, his team developed new formulations for stabilizing the polymer films from photothermal-degradation, improved processing techniques both for the polymer films (PMMA and PAN) and the silver metalization of the polymers (third patent), improved the adhesion in the multilayer-stacks, improved the sensitivity of the specularity and reflectance of metalized polymers, and subjected the metalized polymers to solar-simulated accelerated life testing and real-time field testing.

Paul published 54 papers in peer-reviewed journals and more than 100 internal reports while at General Electric, Union Carbide, and SERI/NREL. Paul was recognized by SERI with an outstanding performance award in 1985 and by Sigma Xi for his scientific contributions. He served as a consultant for Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1970 and NREL for several years following his retirement in 1993. At various stages in his career, he was a member of the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, American Vacuum Society and American Society for Mass Spectrometry. Paul was superbly grounded in his understanding of physics. In conversations about almost any scientific investigation, he ably used his fundamental knowledge to identify the core issues that needed to be resolved. The scientific community has especially benefited from his contributions and we, as his son, and a friend and colleague will sorely miss our insightful and encouraging conversations with him.