In the last in our series on living honorary degree recipients from the class of ’44 we honor Jim Browning. Jim was always a creative and intense type, who channeled his energy and curiosity into engineering. After graduation he became a teaching assistant and then professor at the Thayer School until 1986. It became his obsession of sorts to find a better and more economical way of cutting through rock. He developed and patented “plasma-arc” drilling devices, used for metal cutting, welding and cutting and drilling hard rock, which became a profitable business, Browning Engineering Corp. The highlight of his career was his experience of using a “rocket” drill to pierce through the Ross Ice Shelf for the first time. This project entailed his living, for several months at a time, in the Antarctic. Jim and his wife, Lu, still live in the Hanover area. On a recent visit to Hanover we tracked him down at his remote workshop/laboratory. That day he demonstrated his latest project, which is developing metal coatings and application processes to protect metal devices, such as oil-drilling bits and other specialty metal fittings. It was a truly intriguing and dramatic demonstration, and way beyond our limited scientific abilities. Retirement is not a word in Jim’s vocabulary.


It is my sad duty to report the deaths of the following classmates: Robert Dixon Wiley, M.D.; Charles Siegfried Sporleder Jr.; Eben Greenleaf Blackett; John Joseph Lewis; Joseph A. Garry Jr.; Junius Hoffman; and W. Dale Brougher. 


We offer our condolences to their families and friends.


As you may be aware, DAM is no longer printing obituaries in the actual magazine, but rather on the DAM website at www. dartmouthalumnimagazine.com.


—Betty Munson ’44a, 23 Linscott Road N., York, ME 03909; emmunson1944@gmail.com