James E McGrath

James McGrath, University Distinguished Professor and Ethyl Corporation Professor of Chemistry in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, died after a long battle with brain cancer. He was 79. Before arriving at Virginia Tech in 1975, McGrath spent nearly 20 years in industry working for companies such as Goodyear and Union Carbide and, as a consequence, the university's Department of Chemistry became one of the first in the nation to establish polymer chemistry as a sub-discipline. Working with colleagues such as J.P. Wightman, Tom Ward, Don Baird and Garth Wilkes, their collaboration was rewarded in 1989 when the National Science Foundation established the prestigious Science and Technology Center: High Performance Adhesives and Composites, which McGrath directed from 1989 to 2000. In 1997 he received the first ever Outstanding Alumni Award from the Department of Polymer Science at the University of Akron where he received his master's degree in 1964 and his doctoral degree in 1967.He received his bachelor's degree from Siena College. In addition to his duties at Virginia Tech, McGrath was a visiting professor with the Department of Chemical Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University since 1996, and an adjunct professor with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea, since 1995.