The Iowa Stater
September1996

Alumni awards honor the best

rom eyeing stars to eyeing paintings, and from guiding students to guiding business, the winners of the 1996 Distinguished Achievement Citation -- Iowa State University's premier alumni award -- have given of themselves and made pre-eminent contributions in their chosen vocations.

They, along with many of Iowa State's most remarkable alumni, faculty and staff, will be honored during the annual Honors and Awards Convocation on Friday evening, Sept. 27. The Iowa State Alumni Association moved the ceremony to Homecoming week this year to allow thousands of students, faculty, staff and alumni to join in the celebration of this phenomenal collection of talent, drive and dedication.

This years Distinguished Achievement Citation winners are profiled below.

Final frontier

What is driving the man in charge of the most revolutionary telescope in the world? A passion to look not to the future, but to the past.

Physicist Robert Q. Fugate, senior scientist at the Kirtland Air Force Bases Phillips Laboratory in New Mexico, leads a historic effort to, as he puts it, "allow humankind to peer to the very edge of the universe, where we can view the very beginning of the universe."

His telescope drew the "revolutionary" moniker from Sky & Telescope Magazine not because it's bigger or stronger than any other, but because of a stunning new method of seeing into the night. It's called "adaptive optics," and it's based on mind-numbing principles. But anyone who has seen televised photos from the Hubble spacecraft can understand its essence.

Whenever humans look to the heavens from earth, they have to peer through the light-deforming atmos-phere. No matter how powerful a telescope, the image will be "crinkled," Fugate said.

Where Hubble gets around that obstacle by viewing space from, well, space, Fugate took a more earth-bound route. He uses adaptive optics to study the atmosphere and make adjustments in the telescope mirror to compensate for the deformation of light. When you consider that the atmosphere changes 100 times per second, you begin to realize Fugates challenge.

Fugate has been working with adaptive optics for years. Only since 1991, however, has he been able to talk about it, even with his family. Before then, he worked for the U.S. Department of Defense, studying the functioning of both U.S. and foreign satellites.

While the military continues to back his work, Fugate says adaptive optics is about to be unleashed full-force on all ground-based astronomy. Studying the history of the universe and viewing previously unseen planets in neighboring solar systems are just two of the many applications.

"We are going to revolutionize ground-based astronomy," the usually understated physicist said. "When we put [adaptive optics] on some of the world's biggest telescopes, we're going to make some awesome discoveries."

Magic time

James Halligan may remain an engineer at heart, but he admits that history now plays an important role in his life.

Of the 40 or so books he reads annually, the majority describe a period or event in history. "History allows me to see, over a broad spectrum, how people respond to challenges," he said.

As president of Oklahoma State University, Halligan certainly has his share of opportunities to respond.

"There is nothing more challenging, nothing more rewarding, that I could aspire to," Halligan said. "It is so motivating to be interacting with an unending stream of people from different disciplines. In one meeting, you talk about athletics, the needs of the student union, the microbiology department. I love the intellectual stimulation."

It's what guided him into higher education administration in the first place. Halligan had worked as an engineering professor and administrator for 22 years and was dean of the University of Arkansas College of Engineering when colleagues persuaded him to seek the vacant No. 2 position in university administration. After considerable hesitation, he complied and got the job. Two years later, he sought and landed the New Mexico State presidency. Ten years later in 1994, he was named president of Oklahoma State University.

Despite his love for engineering -- he earned all three of his ISU degrees largely at Marston Hall -- Halligan has found an even greater passion: students. He calls the busiest between-classes periods on campus the "magic time" when he likes to walk the grounds and chat with students. His first moves at Oklahoma State centered on making the institution more student-oriented.

"Like [M. J.] Riggs wrote," Halligan said, paraphrasing the 1883 engineering alumnus words etched near the west entrance of the Memorial Union, "students need to learn how to live a life as well as to learn how to make a living. That's what I try to focus on."

Meteoric rise

Before he died suddenly on May 29, Jerry Junkins had made a meteoric rise from tiny Montrose through Iowa State University and on to leadership of one of the worlds most powerful high-tech firms. The 58-year-old chairman, president and CEO of Texas Instru-ments suffered a heart attack while traveling in Germany on business.

Junkins went to work for Dallas-based TI after his 1959 graduation from Iowa State. After ascending to president and CEO in 1985, he led a major restructuring of the company's principal businesses. Under his leadership TI:

• More than doubled annual revenue, from $4.9 billion to more than $13 billion.
• Was the only U.S. semiconductor manufacturer to gain market share in each year from 1992 to 1995.
• Streamlined its defense operations while turning its focus to specialty computer chips and maintaining its prominence and profitability as a premier defense contractor.
• Executed a successful transition to a more customer-focused approach.

In large part because of Junkins, TI partnered with Iowa State in promoting Total Quality Management principles throughout both organizations. The company also recently agreed to sponsor a new center in the department of electrical and computer engineering to study large-scale integrated systems.

Junkins had a passion for furthering international free trade, serving on the board of directors of the U.S.-Japan Business Council and as a presidential appointee to the Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations.

Junkins also was regarded as one of Dallas leading community leaders.

The Iowa State University Alumni Associations Honors and Awards Committee had chosen Junkins as a 1996 Distinguished Achievement Citation recipient the month before his death.

The real thing

When is a Rembrandt not a Rembrandt? When Edward Sayre says its not.

Sayre is credited with helping facilitate the marriage of science and art. A physical chemist by training, Sayre rather accidentally wandered into using radioactivity to analyze art and archaeological artifacts. Before his five-decade career would end, he had scrutinized works from virtually every major artist and ancient works from around the globe.

"I've been very lucky to be able to combine my personal interest and my work," said Sayre, who now lives in Arlington, Va.

He held a 32-year appointment as chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. That position allowed him great freedom to pursue work with art, including stints as research director and professor at, among others, New York Universitys Institute of Fine Arts and Bostons Museum of Fine Arts. He finished his career working part time as a physical scientist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Sayre was among the first in the world to subject paintings or clay pots to a barrage of neutrons to force them to give up their secrets. By viewing a works reaction to radioactivity, Sayre could, say, learn how artists laid down their brush strokes or relied on various pigments.

"It's not entirely true that each [stroke] is unique, like a fingerprint," Sayre said. "But in most cases, you can find something that allows you to identify an artist."

Similarly, Sayre could study a piece of terra cotta to confirm its origin. This ability has provided historians with powerful weapons in determining the course of entire civilizations.

Sayre has visited archaeological sites around the world. And he has scrutinized work of all the great artists. "A year hasn't passed," he quipped, "that somebody hasn't brought me a lost Leonardo da Vinci."

More times than not, of course, the work is a phony. But when it comes to art authentication, Edward Sayres work will go down as the real thing.

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