Rustum Roy

Rustum Roy (July 3, 1924 – August 26, 2010) was a physicist, born in India, who became a professor at Pennsylvania State University and was a leader in materials research.

As an advocate for interdisciplinarity, he initiated a movement of materials research societies and, outside of his multiple areas of scientific and engineering expertise, wrote impassioned pleas about the need for a fusion of religion and science and humanistic causes.

Later in life he held visiting professorships in materials science at Arizona State University, and in medicine at the University of Arizona.

Roy was born in Ranchi, Bihar Province, India, the son of Narenda Kumar and Rajkumari Roy.

Rustum took a Cambridge School Certificate from Saint Paul's School Darjeeling.

Rustum studied physical chemistry at Patna University, gaining his bachelor's degree in 1942 and master's degree in 1944.

The following year he began study at Pennsylvania State University and earned his Ph.D. in engineering ceramics in 1948.

Rustum Roy married fellow materials scientist Della Marie Martin on June 8 that year.

In 1953, Roy wrote a letter to Life magazine in response to the essay "Is Academic Freedom in Danger?"

by Whittaker Chambers, stating: Sirs:

Chambers neglects to note that since people rarely read Congressional Records, they get their News more by headlines and the tenor of the times.

Thus, most professors "know" or "feel" it is safer today to keep your mouth shut, and, if you open it, not to support any liberal or leftish views.

Let Chambers continue to remind us of the very real perils of the Communist left.

Fanatical preoccupation with self-preservation will lead to loss of more valuable things, not merely academic freedom, but freedom.

Rustum Roy

Assistant Professor

The Pennsylvania State College

State College, PA

In 1962 he was named the first director of the Materials Research Laboratory at Penn State.

He edited the Proceedings of a 1968 Conference on the chemistry of silicon carbide.

The next year a national colloquy was held on materials science in the United States for which Roy edited the Proceedings.

In 1973 he edited the Proceedings of a conference on phase transitions and their applications.

Roy was elected as a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 1973.

In 1974 Roy and Olaf Müller published The Major Ternary Structural Families with Springer-Verlag, which described the principal crystal structures of ternary compounds.

The book received two brief reviews in materials trade journals.

A cement journal reviewer said it would be "Useful to the practicing materials researcher, whether in industry or university, as well as the non-specialist who needs to become informed about particular materials."

A chemist writing for mineral processing readers, described its depth:

In 1977 Rustum Roy proposed that the "science and engineering activity of a university ... [be organized] primarily around a dozen permanent mission-oriented interdisciplinary laboratories."

To reach this conclusion he notes that "universities have been forced into new interdisciplinary patterns not only by the dollar sign but also by the inexorable logic that the real problems of society do not come in discipline-shaped blocks."

The daunting structural inertia of the university did not faze him:

Roy had no formal medical credentials but was an advocate of integrating science, medicine, and spirituality.

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine Roy contributed the article "Integrative medicine to tackle the problem of chronic diseases".

He noted that chronic illness debilitates the lives of many seniors, and that medical interventions are often futile.

He said "little of nothing is being spent on preventative medicine", and cited the ayurveda concepts of "ahara" concerned with nutrition, and "vihara" with the conduct of life.

He noted the exemplary work of Dean Ornish in addressing coronary artery disease as a hopeful innovation.

By 1991 he was a spokesperson for the movement and his lecture "New Materials: Fountainhead for New Technologies and New Science" was published by National Academy Press.

Roy presented the lecture to learned audiences in Washington, D.C.; Tokyo, Japan; New Delhi, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and London in 1991 and 92.

He made the case for linking a technical need to investigative effort, which he terms "technology traction", noting that the method is productive and cost-effective in comparison to science conducted with other purposes.

Rustum Roy was referred to as "[o]ne of the legends of materials science" at the time of his death.

In 2010, close to the end of his life, Roy co-wrote an article in the Huffington Post called "The Mythology Of Science-Based Medicine" with nonscientists Deepak Chopra and Larry Dossey, which David Gorski characterized as "an exercise that combines cherry-picking, logical fallacies, and whining, raising the last of these almost to an art form."