Oral-History:Matthew Tirrell
About Matthew Tirrell
Tirrell was born in 1950 in New Jersey. He went to Northwestern for a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering, to the University of Massachusetts for his PhD. There he specialized in polymers, advised by Stan Middleman. His thesis was on mechanical stresses on enzymes. He went to the University of Minnesota immediately after his PhD and stayed there until a recent move to the University of California Santa Barbara, rising into senior academic and administrative positions. His research has included shear flow damage to blood cells, polymer adsorption on (polymer) surfaces, figuring out how to measure polymer adsorption, adhesion (wounds, plastic), colloidal stabilization, figuring out how to make block co-polymers (“stickers”) that don’t adsorb with one another unstably, polymerization moderling, bio-interfaces, biological adhesion, and peptide architecture.
About the Interview
MATTHEW TIRRELL:An Interview Conducted by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, 7 December 2000
Interview #410 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Inc., and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, Rutgers - the State University, 39 Union Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538 USA. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Matthew Tirrell, an oral history conducted in 2000 by Frederik Nebeker, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Interview
Interview: Matthew Tirrell
Interviewer: Frederik Nebeker
Date: 7 December 2000
Place: Santa Barbara, California
