Guy C. Berry

Carnegie Mellon University

1935 – Present

Chemical Engineer

Awarded Bingham Medal 1990

Fellow, Elected 2015

Guy Curtis Berry attended the University of Michigan for both his undergraduate and graduate degrees, obtaining a B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1957, an M.S. in Polymer Science in 1958, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1960. He worked as a Fellow at the Mellon Institute after graduation and was promoted to Senior Fellow in 1965. He moved into an Associate Professor position at Carnegie Mellon University in 1967 before becoming a Professor of Polymer Science and Chemistry in 1973. He was made University Professor of Polymer Science & Chemistry in 2002, before moving to Emeritus status in 2004. He also held a number of leadership responsibilities at the University serving as Acting Dean of the Mellon College of Science in 1981-82, Acting Head of the Department of Chemistry in 1983-84, before becoming Head of the Department of Chemistry from 1990-1995.

Solutions and melts of flexible polymers interested Berry throughout his career. In 1968 he and T.G. Fox published what is still the definitive work on the factors that govern the viscosity of polymer melts and concentrated solutions. Though nominally a review, this contribution contained much original work, including the proposal that the viscosity of branched polymers is an exponential function of branch length as well as a wide-ranging and critical examination of diluent effects. His beautiful studies of linear and star-branched polymers have remained for many years the “primary standard” for judging dilute solution theories. Berry turned his attention to more concentrated solutions in order to clarify the influence of chain dimensions on viscosity and to explore the molecular-weight and concentration dependence of a broad range of rheological properties. Through shear creep and recovery experiments, he demonstrated the utility of a “critical strain” criterion for the onset of nonlinear response. He combined those results with a simplified form of the BKZ constitutive equation to provide a general framework for systematizing the rheological behavior of flexible polymer solutions. Berry and his group also created a unique and systematic body of results on the rheology of rod-like polymer solutions. They demonstrated that isotropic solutions of rod-like polymers obey the same laws (with appropriately redefined coefficients) as flexible polymers, carefully documenting the qualitative differences in linear response that develop above the ordering transition, as well as showing that the corresponding nonlinear behavior at large strains and elevated shear rates ultimately approaches the isotropic flexible polymer solution results.

Berry is a member of the American Chemical Society, The Society of Rheology, the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been honored in numerous ways, included appointment as a Fellow of the American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, and The Society of Rheology. Besides the Bingham Medal, he won the Pittsburgh Prize (1994) and the Distinguished Service Award, Pittsburgh Section, from the American Chemical Society. He held positions as Visiting Professor at Kyoto University, Colorado State University, and the University of Tokyo, and he has served in an editorial capacity for the Journal of Polymer Science, the Journal of Rheology, and Progress in Polymer Science.