Ruth H. Pater ’77 PhD

Ruth H. Pater ’77 PhD, of Bethesda; formerly of Yorktown, Va.,  and Windsor, Conn.; June 27. She taught undergraduate chemistry at Southeastern Massachusetts University and did postdoctoral work at Brown before entering the private sector as a chemist at United Technologies Research Center in Hartford, Conn. In 1980, she joined NASA as a senior polymer scientist, first at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and then at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., where she worked until her retirement in 2013. During her tenure with NASA she achieved global recognition and in 1981 the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering chose a paper she had coauthored on epoxy resins as its paper of the year. She was the recipient of numerous awards, including the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, the 2005 NASA Commercial Invention of the Year Award, and a Floyd L. Thompson Fellowship to conduct research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology for a year. In addition she held more than 20 U.S. and foreign patents. She enjoyed gardening, cooking, hiking in Shenandoah National Park, and listening to opera. She is survived by three daughters, seven grandchildren, a sister, and two brothers.