Abstract
THE Council of the Institute of Petroleum has awarded the Cadman Memorial Medal to Mr. Robert Price Russell, president of the Standard Oil Development Co., the central technical and research organisation of the Standard Oil Company (N. J.). Great services were rendered by Mr. Russell and his associates during the War in the production of high-octane aviation fuels, synthetic rubbers and toluene for explosives, and in the development of flame throwers, incendiaries and smoke generators. More than half the American output of aviation petrol for war-planes was manufactured by the catalytic cracking process, in which Mr. Russell played a notable part. Nine tenths of the American output of petroleum-based butadiene, the starting material in the manufacture of synthetic rubber, came from the process which Mr. Russell directed into large-scale production. In recognition of his war-time work, Mr. Russell was awarded the Medal for Merit, the highest civilian award in the United States. In 1946 he received the gold medal of the American Institute of Chemists for “noteworthy and outstanding service to the science of chemistry”. Mr. Russell is well known personally in Great Britain, for he came here in 1944 as chairman of the Petroleum, Chemical and Rubber Division of the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey. A team of scientific workers under his supervision entered Germany on the heels of the front-line troops to survey the enemy's vast oil-chemical industry.
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Cadman Medal of the Institute of Petroleum : Mr. R. P. Russell. Nature 159, 121–122 (1947). https://doi.org/10.1038/159121b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/159121b0