Terry Cole Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Shirley K. Cohen

Abstract

Interview in three sessions, October 1996, with Terry Cole, senior faculty associate in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and senior member of the technical staff of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Cole earned his BS in chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 1954 and his PhD from Caltech in 1958 under Don Yost, on magnetic resonance. The following year he moved to the Ford Scientific Research Laboratory, in Dearborn, Michigan, where he rose to head the departments of chemistry and chemical engineering. In 1980 he joined JPL’s Energy & Technology Applications branch; in 1982 he became JPL’s chief technologist, and he was instrumental in establishing JPL’s Microdevices Laboratory and its Center for Space Microelectronic Technology. Interview includes recollections of Lew Allen’s directorship of JPL and a discussion of the origins of the SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship) program.

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Terry Cole, interview by Shirley K. Cohen, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, October 11, 1996, October 30, 1996, https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Cole_T.