Bruce Albert Scott, a solid-state chemist, technical manager, and program director of technical recruiting at IBM Corp’s T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, died on 1 October 2002 in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, after a 10-year battle with cancer.
Bruce was born on 23 February 1940 in Trenton, New Jersey. He received a BS in chemistry from Rutgers University in 1962 and earned his PhD in solid-state chemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1965. His doctoral thesis, under Robert Bernheim, was entitled “NMR and Magnetic Susceptibility Studies of Transition Metal Monophosphides.”
After beginning his professional career with a short stint at DuPont’s Eastern Laboratory in Gibbstown, New Jersey, where he was involved in the development of catalytic processes for the synthesis of organic polymer intermediates, Bruce joined the T. J. Watson Research Center in 1967. He spent the remainder of his productive and multifaceted career there. In the ensuing years, he made contributions in the areas of solid-state chemistry and structure–property relationships in a variety of systems including metal-oxide systems, metal complexes, amorphous solids, organic metals, and high-temperature superconductors. He also contributed to an understanding of the kinetics and mechanisms that govern thin-film deposition processes.
He became a manager in the physical sciences department in 1972 and championed several new efforts in the study of organic semiconductors and metals, electroactive polymers, chemical-vapor deposition of copper oxide superconductors, nanoscopic materials, and silicon-materials chemistry. His work in silicon-materials chemistry was an important inspiration to further the studies in the science and technology of low-temperature silicon and silicon–germanium epitaxy.
From the late 1980s to the late 1990s, Bruce’s research focused on the synthesis and solid-state chemistry of new superconducting materials at high pressures, which led to a fruitful collaboration with scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. In 1989, Bruce was appointed senior manager of chemistry and materials science in a promotion that recognized his managerial talent.
During the last few years of his life, Bruce committed all his energy to recruiting science students from underrepresented minority groups. Not surprisingly, he carried out this responsibility with his typical intensity and zest. Until his death, Bruce directed the recruitment effort.
Bruce was an accomplished technical manager, an effective recruiter, and an inspiring mentor to many. His contributions have been recognized by his colleagues, both at IBM and in the scientific community at large. He had a natural curiosity about the world around him. He was a closet geologist and an avid jogger who combined the two activities into a hobby by collecting unusual rocks while jogging. In his office, he proudly displayed his rock collection.
A jovial man who cared a great deal about others, Bruce appreciated good humor and often quoted from Bob Dylan songs. I will particularly miss the many lively lunch discussions I had with him while he was eating his staple lunch, cranberry juice-soaked granola. Bruce enriched the lives of many and he is missed by his family and colleagues.
