 Edward S.S. Morrison (MSME '63) was one of the first (perhaps the first) graduate students advised by Professor Depew. He came to the UW in the early '60s, and endeavored to duplicate and extend Professor Depew's studies at the University of California in heat transfer to gas-solids mixtures. Mr. Morrison built a test rig on the north wall of the Heat Transfer Lab. Shortly after beginning the project he was joined on it by Vin Rajpaul from Boeing's Transport Division. Morrison did his thesis work proving out the equipment, and Rajpaul did further work extending the range of study.
Morrison left Boeing in September 1963 to join the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Co. at Bethpage, Long Island. There he joined the Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer Group along with Edward Lee, who also received his MSME from UW in December 1963. Their project was heat transfer design of the Apollo Lunar Module. Morrison found his experience useful in design analysis of the LM, in bits and pieces at first, then in modeling the entire vehicle. Along with company programmers, he designed the Grumman Thermal Analyzer for further work.
Having worked out their designs in Grumman's own thermal-vacuum chamber, they then proved them in full scale in the Space Environment Simulation Lab at the new Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston. Morrison was sent to Houston to handle this NASA testing at the same time as the Apollo fire at the Cape. The fire set the whole program back almost a year, giving his team plenty of time to do the job. With Grumman, Morrison supported the Apollo 11 and 12 Missions, then left Grumman rather than return to New York.
He was hired by General Electric to work on their support contract with NASA. He was the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office's main contact with Grumman concerning the further development of the LM, and worked on all the rest of the Apollo program, the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz programs, at ASPO, and at Crew Systems. When everything wound down in 1975 he left GE for a new career in the petrochemical industry.
At Union Carbide, he worked with their heat transfer "guru," John A. Moore, for 18 months, then assumed Moore's position when he retired. At Union Carbide he designed, tested and trouble-shot heat exchangers of every kind in the industry.
In 1994 Ed Morrison retired, and is now spending his time getting an MA in history and doing volunteer work on the USS Texas, a 1914-era battleship preserved by the State of Texas. Ed describes the Texas as a "veritable museum of ancient heat transfer equipment."
Looking back on his distinguished and fascinating career, Ed Morrison has this to say about his studies at UW and about his advisor, Professor Depew: "In all this, my graduate studies, culminating with the thesis work, has been formative, both directly, through increased factual knowledge, and indirectly, through the discipline of research and writing the thesis. It was a struggle, but paid dividends in my later life; and I thank you for holding my nose to the grindstone when I needed it. I'm now back at it, going for an MA in history. Why? I don't know. I just never had one before, I guess."
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