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Obituary for Michael N. Gardos
Tribology International 36 (2003) 647–648 www.elsevier.com/locate/triboint
Obituary
Obituary for Michael N. Gardos P.J. Blau
We mark with sadness and shock, the untimely passing of Dr. Michael N. Gardos, age 64, a prominent and much-honored member of the world tribology community. I met Mike more than twenty years ago at the 1980 Gordon Research Conference on Tribology. His outspoken style and ebullient personality made a strong, lasting impression on all who met him. His incisive questions and comments at technical meetings sometimes left presenters speechless, but he could be very kind and complimentary as well. Mike had a characterbuilding early life, narrowly escaping from Hungary while a student activist in the aftermath of the October 1956 Hungarian uprising against the former Soviet Union. He once showed me a scar on his arm from a Soviet bullet. Having to rely on one’s own resources to survive in a hostile world creates a sense of self-reliance and self-confidence that is difficult to achieve by any other means. After a stint in the US Army (1959–1963) he joined the civilian workforce, earning college degrees at California State University at Long Beach (BSc in Chemistry) and Century University (PhD in Materials Science and Engineering), both in the Los Angeles area. Mike made significant and enduring contributions to aerospace-related tribology research, focusing on the tribochemistry of solid lubricants and the role of environment on the friction and wear of thin films and coatings. Just by chance, as an Air Force reservist serving a tour of duty during the late 1970s in the Lubricants Branch at the Air Force Materials Laboratory in Ohio, I happened to sit at the same desk Mike had used when he was a guest worker there. The drawers of that old, gray 0301-679X/03/$ - see front matter doi:10.1016/S0301-679X(03)00071-9
metal desk were full of notebooks, calculations, and data testifying to Mike’s unending curiosity about the nature of things tribological. Perhaps it was his enduring fascination with the field of tribochemistry and contact mechanics that led him to become the only one in the history of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers to win all four of STLE’s best published technical paper awards. STLE further recognized his contributions by electing him a Fellow, and as recently as 2002, he won the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ prestigious Mayo D. Hersey Award. Mike was also was a Member of the Advisory Board of the Materials and Process Simulation Center of the Caltech Beckman Institute. The mission of the Beckman Institute is to sponsor and provide technological support for high-risk research projects aimed at inventing methods, instrumentation and materials that will open new avenues for fundamental research in chemical and biological sciences. Since September 2001, Mike was a Program Manager in the Defense Sciences Office of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he was responsible for a wide range of technical programs aimed at improving the capabilities of soldiers on the battlefield. These programs included work in Air and Water Purification, and new initiatives in Water Harvesting and Mesoscopic Steam Engines. Before joining DARPA, he was a Senior Engineering Fellow and the Chief Tribologist at Raytheon Electronic Systems (formerly Hughes Aircraft Company). During his 36year tenure there, he led basic and applied tribology research on moving mechanical assemblies used in advanced space, airborne, terrestrial and undersea sys-
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P.J. Blau / Tribology International 36 (2003) 647–648
tems. He worked on projects for such agencies as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the US Air Force, and DARPA. In the early 1980s he served as Hughes’ principal investigator for a major project that sought to develop solid lubricating films for extreme-environment, aerospace applications. Even at that time, nano- and micro-tribology issues were forefront in his mind, and he continued his avid interest in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, working on diamond films as a possible MEMS bearing material. He was the author of eighty-five refereed papers, two book chapters and four patents. The last time that I talked with Mike Gardos was in August of 2000, at the NATO Advanced Studies Institute on ‘Fundamentals of Tribology and Bridging the Gap Between the Macro- and Micro/Nanoscales’, set in the picturesque city of Keszthely in his native Hungary. He was presenting an invited paper on nanoscale friction
and wear transitions in polished silicon, silicon carbide, and diamond films. That paper overviewed a decade of his research in tribochemistry using a unique, environmentally-controlled scanning electron microscope. Being back in Hungary again must have evoked many mixed emotions, but it didn’t stop Mike from joining our bus tours and forays into the countryside. Dr. Michael N. Gardos died on March 22, 2003, at his residence in Northern Virginia. It is hard to believe that Mike is no longer among us. His place in the development of triboscience is clearly established, and those of us who had the pleasure of knowing him both professionally and socially will miss him greatly. The writer wishes to acknowledge the supporting information provided by Dr. Larry Fehrenbacher, Technology Assessment and Transfer, in preparing this obituary.
Obituary
Obituary for Michael N. Gardos P.J. Blau
We mark with sadness and shock, the untimely passing of Dr. Michael N. Gardos, age 64, a prominent and much-honored member of the world tribology community. I met Mike more than twenty years ago at the 1980 Gordon Research Conference on Tribology. His outspoken style and ebullient personality made a strong, lasting impression on all who met him. His incisive questions and comments at technical meetings sometimes left presenters speechless, but he could be very kind and complimentary as well. Mike had a characterbuilding early life, narrowly escaping from Hungary while a student activist in the aftermath of the October 1956 Hungarian uprising against the former Soviet Union. He once showed me a scar on his arm from a Soviet bullet. Having to rely on one’s own resources to survive in a hostile world creates a sense of self-reliance and self-confidence that is difficult to achieve by any other means. After a stint in the US Army (1959–1963) he joined the civilian workforce, earning college degrees at California State University at Long Beach (BSc in Chemistry) and Century University (PhD in Materials Science and Engineering), both in the Los Angeles area. Mike made significant and enduring contributions to aerospace-related tribology research, focusing on the tribochemistry of solid lubricants and the role of environment on the friction and wear of thin films and coatings. Just by chance, as an Air Force reservist serving a tour of duty during the late 1970s in the Lubricants Branch at the Air Force Materials Laboratory in Ohio, I happened to sit at the same desk Mike had used when he was a guest worker there. The drawers of that old, gray 0301-679X/03/$ - see front matter doi:10.1016/S0301-679X(03)00071-9
metal desk were full of notebooks, calculations, and data testifying to Mike’s unending curiosity about the nature of things tribological. Perhaps it was his enduring fascination with the field of tribochemistry and contact mechanics that led him to become the only one in the history of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers to win all four of STLE’s best published technical paper awards. STLE further recognized his contributions by electing him a Fellow, and as recently as 2002, he won the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ prestigious Mayo D. Hersey Award. Mike was also was a Member of the Advisory Board of the Materials and Process Simulation Center of the Caltech Beckman Institute. The mission of the Beckman Institute is to sponsor and provide technological support for high-risk research projects aimed at inventing methods, instrumentation and materials that will open new avenues for fundamental research in chemical and biological sciences. Since September 2001, Mike was a Program Manager in the Defense Sciences Office of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he was responsible for a wide range of technical programs aimed at improving the capabilities of soldiers on the battlefield. These programs included work in Air and Water Purification, and new initiatives in Water Harvesting and Mesoscopic Steam Engines. Before joining DARPA, he was a Senior Engineering Fellow and the Chief Tribologist at Raytheon Electronic Systems (formerly Hughes Aircraft Company). During his 36year tenure there, he led basic and applied tribology research on moving mechanical assemblies used in advanced space, airborne, terrestrial and undersea sys-
648
P.J. Blau / Tribology International 36 (2003) 647–648
tems. He worked on projects for such agencies as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the US Air Force, and DARPA. In the early 1980s he served as Hughes’ principal investigator for a major project that sought to develop solid lubricating films for extreme-environment, aerospace applications. Even at that time, nano- and micro-tribology issues were forefront in his mind, and he continued his avid interest in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, working on diamond films as a possible MEMS bearing material. He was the author of eighty-five refereed papers, two book chapters and four patents. The last time that I talked with Mike Gardos was in August of 2000, at the NATO Advanced Studies Institute on ‘Fundamentals of Tribology and Bridging the Gap Between the Macro- and Micro/Nanoscales’, set in the picturesque city of Keszthely in his native Hungary. He was presenting an invited paper on nanoscale friction
and wear transitions in polished silicon, silicon carbide, and diamond films. That paper overviewed a decade of his research in tribochemistry using a unique, environmentally-controlled scanning electron microscope. Being back in Hungary again must have evoked many mixed emotions, but it didn’t stop Mike from joining our bus tours and forays into the countryside. Dr. Michael N. Gardos died on March 22, 2003, at his residence in Northern Virginia. It is hard to believe that Mike is no longer among us. His place in the development of triboscience is clearly established, and those of us who had the pleasure of knowing him both professionally and socially will miss him greatly. The writer wishes to acknowledge the supporting information provided by Dr. Larry Fehrenbacher, Technology Assessment and Transfer, in preparing this obituary.