Prize Recipient

Alan Neville Gent
University of Akron

Citation:

"For fundamental contributions to the physics of adhesion and fracture of elastomers."

Background:

Alan N. Gent is now Professor Emeritus of Polymer Physics and Polymer Engineering at The University of Akron, where he has been since 1961, and Scientific Advisor to The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. From 1949 to 1961 he was a research physicist at the British (now Malaysian) Rubber Producers' Research Association.

He holds a B.Sc. degree in Physics and Mathematics (1946, 1949), and a Ph.D in science (1955) from the University of London. His main research interests are in the mechanics of deformation and fracture of rubber and plastics. He is a past Chair of the Division of High Polymer Physics of the American Physical Society (1977), the past President of the Adhesion Society (1978-80), and past President of the Society of Rheology (1981-83). He has chaired four Gordon Research Conferences: Elastomers (1966), Cellular Materials (1069), Adhesion (1976), and Composites (1991).

Prof. Gent has received the Mobay Award of the Society of the Plastics Industry (with A.G. Thomas) in 1964, the Bingham Medal of the Society of Rheology in 1975, the Colwyn Medal of the Plastics and Rubber Institute in 1978, the International Research Award of the Society of Plastics Engineers in 1980, the 3M Award in Adhesion Science of the Adhesion Society and the Whitby Award of the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society in 1987. In 1990 he was awarded the Charles Goodyear Medal of the Rubber Division, American Chemical Society, and in 1991 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.