The launch of a new College would be "clearly a great adventure, but so is jumping off a bridge," the physicist Joseph B. Platt wrote decades after the challenge in 1956 to become the founding president of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont.
The humor was a constant resource for Platt, known for singing silly songs to teach science to their students, but so was the creation of consensus. His ability to bring to the suggestion that has helped put the school "on a path to success," according to George I. McKelvey, director of development, when the school opened its doors in 1957.
The beginnings of the private university, Platt told the Times in 1987: "It was all very clear that things are good we were able to convince people of the caliber of our faculty, and he plucked up the courage real 'commitment to them. part of reaching a position of no sense. "
When Platt resigned in 1976, Harvey Mudd was considered one of the nation's leading science and engineering universities, a distinction that remains true today.
Platt, who was 96, died Tuesday at home in Claremont after a period of declining health, has announced a daughter, Ann Platt Walker.
"He had a profound impact on the lives of us all here thanks largely to their vision and incredible energy," said Maria Klawe, now president of the university, in a statement. "Joe has developed the mission that we embrace today To prepare socially responsible engineers and scientists in an educational culture of collaboration and fun"
From 1976 to 1981, Platt was president of what is now Claremont Graduate University, one of seven schools in the Claremont consortium of universities. Harvey Mudd, the name of a benefactor and former board member, was the fifth of these schools. Platt continued to teach, even in his 90 years.
When Platt was hired to direct the nascent universities, was a highly respected teacher and a physicist at the University of Rochester, where he helped design a synchrotron, a powerful particle accelerator that is used primarily in research.
Harvey Mudd was one of the few private schools supported by science and engineering that was founded in 20 century, according to Platt, who told the Times in 1987 that one of his goals was to develop "the technical direction of the next generation . "
He was one of three administrators when the school opened its doors in September 1957 with seven teachers, 48 students and a bedroom. Within a decade, there were about 300 students and 43 teachers.
"The university today, nationally recognized as a" producer "of the future science and engineering doctorates, owes its intellectual wealth and importance, more than any other, for this great leader" of Eugene Hotchkiss, a Harvey Mudd colleague who has become president of Lake Forest College in Illinois, wrote in the preface to the 1994 book, Platt, "Harvey Mudd College. the first 20 years"
Those who signed the Platt soon find the "courage is contagious," wrote Hotchkiss. "With his leadership, had the courage to create a new and different program."
Joseph Beaven Platt was born August 12, 1915, in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in Rochester, New York
Within its first year and second year at the University of Rochester, Platt served in the Merchant Navy in the South Atlantic. While on the call in the night, he decided to pursue a career in teaching physics, he said.
After graduating with a degree in the field in 1937, holds a doctorate in physics in 1942 from Cornell University and joined the faculty of the University of Rochester.
He spent most of World War II at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the development of radar devices to help the military. After the war he returned to the University of Rochester, but took a two-year license in 1949 to oversee the investigation of physics Atomic Energy Commission.
Platt has met Jean Ferguson Rusk, a mathematician who worked at Polaroid in 1945 and married the following year. He is survived by his wife, daughters Ann Platt Walker, La Jolla and Elizabeth Platt Garrow Willowbrook, Illinois, and four grandchildren.
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