09/19/97

Patent Pending

Whispers of "genius" followed him everywhere, although no one ever called him that to his face.  Bill Bauman, my dad, knew he was different as a child, because he skipped first and third grades and eventually graduated from high school with his brother George, who had started out three years ahead of him.

Local quarry boys, who had been held back in school, weren’t impressed. "Think you're so smart?" they sneered, as they ambushed him and shoved him face first into the snow.  They never really hurt him; they just kept him good and scared ... kept him humble, too.

After graduating from Hawkins, a private preparatory school in Cleveland, the fifteen-year-old Bill spent a year away from intense academic work to take shorthand and typing at the public high school. Under the tutelage of an art instructor there, he also learned the intricacies of wood carving, pewter molding, and batiking cloth.  The following year he attended the Case School of Applied Science before he won a full scholarship to Yale University, where he completed an undergraduate degree and Ph.D. in chemistry. 

Bill married his longtime sweetheart, Janet Kenny.  They settled and raised five children in Midland, Michigan, headquarters of the Dow Chemical Company, his employer until retirement forty years later.

Chemical research demanded every ounce of Bill's creativity.  His research centered around the development of ion exchange resins used to soften and purify water supplies.  He developed Dowex 50, a cation exchange resin of unique and reproducible structure.  He proposed the use of Dowex 50 as a universal tool for the recovery and purification of inorganic and organic cations, from plutonium to aminoacids.  Soon Dow added Dowex 1, a comparable anion exchange resin, to the tool kit to extend the utility of ion exchange to all ions.  Bill has published many papers defining the properties of Dowex 50 and Dowex 1, leading to their use in research laboratories around the world.

In addition to making new ion exchange resins, Bill found ways to use ion exchange to extract specific minerals from brine, a dense salt/mineral solution found underground in several locations around the world.  Dow Chemical located in Midland because of the rich brine fields there.  When brine is run through an ion exchange resin selective for a specific mineral such as magnesium, calcium, or lithium, the "captured" mineral can then be made available commercially.  Lithium, for example, is an important element used in the production of batteries.  Bill has developed a process of recovering magnesium from seawater using ion exchange.

Now retired maybe, but never inactive, Bill continues to develop new ideas for selectively extracting minerals from brine.  His basement lab, not quite as fancy as the one at Dow, contains an old electric frypan, a microwave oven, small electronic scale, and various resins and crystals which he uses to test out his hypotheses.  At age 82, he’s inventing more than ever, and this time he owns the patents himself!  He recently sold two patents to an international chemical company which is investing millions of dollars in his remarkable, cost-effective lithium extraction process.

Dad only recently told me about the bullies who had terrorized him for being so smart.  I feel immensely relieved that they never actually hurt him.  His inventive, playful mind kept me and my siblings entertained and constantly curious through the years.  Dad knew he was different; it's lucky for all of us that he was happy to stay that way.

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.