ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 29, 1994                   TAG: 9411290132
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR STEINHARDT DIES AT 76

Hollins College professor Ralph G. Steinhardt, remembered by friends and colleagues as much for his humor and energy as for his achievements in chemistry, died Sunday. He was 76.

A chemistry professor from 1956 to 1980, Steinhardt was "a fixture at Hollins," senior professor Jake Wheeler said.

"He was an interesting and enthusiastic teacher," Wheeler said. "He had a great respect for the scientific method and he developed the same enthusiasm in his students."

Steinhardt received his bachelor's of science, master's of science and Ph.D. in chemistry from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and also earned a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from Virginia Tech.

In 1944, he joined the staff at Los Alamos, the top secret national laboratory that developed and tested the first atomic bombs.

"That had a tremendous impact on his life," Wheeler said. "I think later in life he had become troubled, as we all have, about its ramifications."

Throughout his extensive career, Steinhardt was a faculty fellow at the National Science Foundation, received grants from the American Chemical Society, authored publications in Nature and the Journal of Chemical Physics, and held several patents.

Steinhardt frequently entertained students and other faculty with his self-taught bass-playing skills in the "Hollins Hambones" band, and with his comic acts in the quadrennial "Faculty Follies."

In an article just before Steinhardt's retirement, Louis D. Rubin, former English chair and founder of the Hollins Creative Writing program, said "this energetic little man ... exuded wit, kindness, camaraderie, wide-ranging intellectual enthusiasms and a fierce devotion to teaching and learning." 


 by CNB