Ralph E. Crump ’66

Ralph E. Crump ’66, an adopted classmate and longtime member of the Thayer School’s board (1986-2010), passed away on March 16. In the 1960s he mentored many Thayer students, including Dean Spatz ’66, Th’67, and Chris Miller ’66, Th’67, on a reverse osmosis project that evolved into Osmonics Inc. which Ralph cofounded with Dean in 1969. Ralph was also the cofounder of Frigitronics Inc., a manufacturer of cryosurgical equipment, vision-testing products, hematology equipment, and other medical and diagnostic devices. A graduate and generous benefactor of UCLA, Ralph and his late wife, Marjorie, endowed a chair in medical engineering, funded the Crump Institute for Medical Engineering (a research unit devoted primarily to scanning), and funded the Marjorie L. Crump Chair in Social Welfare. At Dartmouth Ralph and Marjorie funded the Ph.D. research of John Collier ’72, Th’75, Th’77—a seminal application of engineering to orthopedics, and endowed the Myron Tribus chair. In addition, they supported professor Stu Trembly’s research on reshaping the myopic cornea with microwaves. Ralph was awarded Thayer School’s highest honor, the Robert Fletcher Award, in 1979. He served in the Merchant Marines in World War II and since 2014 was on the board of the National WW II Museum in Washington, D.C.