Dr. Norman G. Gaylord, d.-2007

Norman G. Gaylord, a versatile industrial chemist and long time member of the Division of Polymer Chemistry, died September 18 in Boynton Beach, Fla. He was 84.

 

Dr. Gaylord developed a rigid material, siloxane-methacrylate, that was both permeable and suited to the production of lenses.

 

Joseph C. Salamone, a polymer chemist and former vice president of research for Bausch & Lomb, said that Dr. Gaylord's experiments had been "critical to the development of novel materials, and through them he became a pioneer at the beginning of a new field."

 

From the Gaylord Research Institute, his laboratory in New Providence, N.J., Dr. Gaylord also worked on rubbers and resins, films and fabrics for industrial and commercial applications.

 

With Norbert Bikales and Herman F. Mark and others in the 1960s and '70s, he edited a standard series of reference books for chemists, The Encyclopedia of Polymer Science and Technology: Plastics, Resins, Rubbers and Fibers.

 

Norman Grant Gaylord was born Norman Grant Goldstein in Brooklyn, and legally changed his name in the 1940s. He graduated from City College of New York and went on to earn a doctorate in polymer chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1950.

 

Dr. Gaylord conducted research for DuPont, the Western Petrochemical Corporation and the Interchemical Corporation before founding his laboratory. He later taught chemistry and advised graduate students at Drew University in Madison, N.J. In 1985, the American Academy of Optometry gave Dr. Gaylord its Founder's Award in recognition of his work on rigid contact lenses.

 

Many of the older members of our Division will remember seeing his signature purple shirt in the front row of the Gordon Conference on Polymers.

 

Conveyed by Professor James A. Moore, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute