J. Herbert Hollomon papers

J. Herbert Hollomon (1919-1985) earned an SB in physics at MIT in 1940 and an ScD in 1946 in Metallurgy, also at MIT.

In 1946 Hollomon joined General Electric Company's research laboratory and later became head of the Metallurgy and Ceramics Research Division, and in 1960 head of General Electric's General Engineering Laboratory. In 1962, he went to Washington, DC as first Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology in the Kennedy adminstration. He left Washington in 1967, as president designate and then president of the University of Oklahoma. He was a founding member of the National Academy of Engineering.

In 1970 Hollomon returned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as consultant to the president and provost. He was director of the Center for Policy Alternatives which was formally started at MIT in 1972, and was both director and professor of engineering until 1983 when the Center moved to Boston University. At MIT the center was a multidisciplinary policy analysis group within the School of Engineering, concerned with industrial innovation, and with the purpose to identify and study emergin social issues in which technology and engineering play signficant roles.