Neal B. Mitchell ’58

Neal B. Mitchell ’58, of Northbridge, Mass.; Apr. 8. After graduating from Brown, he received a graduate degree in structural engineering from MIT and was awarded a fellowship to work with engineers and architects including Pier Luigi Nervi in Italy, Eduardo Torroja in Spain, and Manuel Rocha in Portugal. He held teaching positions at RISD, Tufts, Cornell, and Harvard. At the time, he was the youngest assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design at the age of 29 and then the youngest full professor on the Harvard College Faculty, where he started a technology laboratory that achieved an international reputation in teaching innovation and structural engineering. He served on three different Presidential Committees that studied aspects of education in the U.S. In the early 1970s he founded a consulting company that developed a series of management and engineering computer programs that became widely used around the world and marketed by IBM. The firm worked on many industrial and military programs, from the development of the General Motors subsidiary Saturn to the Penguin Missile Program for NATO, as well as many large building and civil engineering projects worldwide. He was recognized as a world leader in program management and lectured worldwide to major Fortune 500 corporations. In 2007 he was the recipient of the Brown Engineering Alumni Medal in recognition of his contribution to the engineering profession. He generously supported undergraduate summer research at the School of Engineering through the Neal B. Mitchell ’58 Award – Systems Thinking Project. He was involved in local government and lent his expertise to several local building, planning, and construction projects. He also helped to develop and teach a systems engineering course to high school students. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army and is survived by his wife, Kristin; a daughter; two sons; two daughters-in-law; and five grandchildren.