Roger preparing for a rehearsal
of an independent choral group

Roger is a Hero of Chemistry, according to the American Chemical Society, and a bass baritone.

Roger is abashed at being called a hero of anything, but, in fact, he was a member of a team of five scientists working in two different Exxon company divisions who produced an invention for which they received the American Chemical Society’s Heroes of Chemistry award in 1998. For that invention, Roger and the others on the team were inducted the same year into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame. Roger retired from Exxon Chemical Company in 1995, after a 30-year career, and promptly started another one, as a bass baritone. That is, he joined a newly formed independent choral ensemble, Schola Cantorum on Hudson, a mix of well-qualified amateurs such as Roger and active professionals.

Roger also formed a company, West Technologies, Inc., to do patent searches, mostly concerning “polymers” (that is, plastics and rubber), but also in connection with other chemical engineering issues relating to petroleum refining equipment and processes. Patent searching is a complicated affair. Nevertheless, Roger manages to combine his work in this field with participation in Schola Cantorum on Hudson and other interests.

Roger was born in Binghamton, New York, in 1938, and in October 2006 he attended the 50th reunion of his class at Binghamton Central High School. At Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, he got a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering degree, met his wife (in 1959), and, in 1965, obtained a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering. Whereupon Roger and his wife moved to New Jersey, and Roger started his career with Exxon. Roger and his wife have lived in New Jersey ever since, raising a son who is a chemical engineer working on computer chip design and a daughter who is a mechanical engineer working on the design of automated medical analytical equipment.

Roger with a patent plaque and trophies for the
invention that got the Heroes of Chemistry award

Not all is science, of course, with Roger. As a member of Schola Cantorum on Hudson, Roger has performed music ranging from medieval to contemporary works, including some that were premiered by the ensemble, which also commissions new music. Roger served as chairman of the board of the organization for three years and currently manages its mailing list database.

Schola Cantorum on Hudson presents a minimum of three concerts a year, performing each at locations in New Jersey and in New York City, in Manhattan. In March 2006, the ensemble invited another comparable New Jersey choral group to join it in order to premiere a Mass by Randall Svane. On the basis of a CD made of a performance of the Svane Mass that was conducted by the Artistic Director of Schola Cantorum on Hudson, Dr. Deborah Simpkin King, an invitation has been extended to the group to perform the work in Austria, in Salzburg and Vienna, in August 2008.

Another interest of Roger’s is indicated by the wine aroma kit (a gift from his daughter) resting on a coffee table in the living room of his house in Montclair, New Jersey. Roger belongs to a wine tasting society. He also likes to read about astronomy and astrophysics and attends meetings of the American Astronomical Society with his wife, who is an astronomer. Somehow, he manages to do all this while donating a total of 16 gallons of blood and counting.

As a patent searcher, on behalf of clients, Roger must comb various online databases, which have differing indexing systems, to find descriptive text and sometimes drawings for already patented inventions and patent applications. If he needs additional information to determine the usefulness of a description for his purposes, he goes on line to patent offices, especially the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office, for the complete text and drawings (if available) relating to the described invention. Whether or not the information Roger has amassed is pertinent to the technology a client hopes to patent, however, is strictly for the client to determine, after reviewing the information with a patent attorney.

Roger is a co-inventor, himself, of four patented innovations in the field of polymer science (the employer is the owner of the patents), including one for the invention that made him and his colleagues “Heroes of Chemistry.” The “better mousetrap” that they built was a better synthetic rubber, one that, according to their New Jersey Hall of Fame citation, “results in long engine life and reduction of fuel consumption for autos and trucks, thereby extending vehicle service life and making a real contribution to our national goals of conservation.”

Roger before a performance
in Manhattan in May 2007

In Roger’s words, the team “synthesized a novel polymer, a synthetic rubber, using a novel chemical reactor. The product is used in very small concentrations in motor oil to improve its performance.” The problem Roger and his team addressed was to improve, to a degree greater than previously achieved, the performance of lubricating oils used in car engines under a range of temperatures. Researchers had found that adding small amounts of polymers to oil of medium viscosity, or thickness, resulted in a solution with a viscosity that changed less with changes in temperature. Roger and his colleagues further improved the leveling-out of this viscosity change, thus further improving the performance of the lubricating oils, over the temperature range of a car’s engine.

Roger is not resting on his laurels, however. He has been studying singing for over ten years, with Dr. King, the Artistic Director of Schola Cantorum on Hudson, and is frequently to be found preparing for one of the group’s concerts. (For more information about Schola Cantorum on Hudson, go to www.scholaonhudson.org.)