Samuel D. Cornell

SAMUEL DOUGLAS CORNELL   
Samuel Douglas Cornell, former executive officer of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, died November 12, 2010, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 95. Doug was born April 16, 1915, in Buffalo, New York. He graduated from Yale College, class of 1935, and from the Yale Graduate School, 1938, with a Ph.D. in physics, and joined the Eastman Kodak Company as an optical physicist. In 1939 he married Priscilla Mary Greene of Buffalo. In 1942 Doug joined the U.S. Naval Reserve as a research physicist working on anti-aircraft technology and new weapons development. Discharged in 1946 with the rank of commander, he joined the Planning Division of the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense in Washington. In 1949 he was appointed director of the Planning Division with responsibility for, among other things, formulation of a master plan for military research and development. In 1952, Doug left the Department of Defense to become executive officer of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council, a position he held for thirteen years. In 1959 his wife Priscilla passed away after a long bout with cancer. Doug left the NAS/NRC in 1965 to become president of Mackinac College, a new liberal arts college in northern Michigan. In 1968 he married Judithe Friderichsen of Denmark. Doug returned to the National Academy of Sciences as special assistant to its president, where he served until retiring in 1981. In 1983, he and Judithe moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in 2004 to Tucson, Arizona. He is survived by his wife Judithe and by his two daughters, Susan Cornell Wilkes of Minneapolis and Deborah Cornell Colwell of Tucson, his two sons, S. Douglas Cornell III and Stephen E. Cornell, both of Tucson, nine grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.Services will be private.