Rutherford Aris, pt. 4

We have talked about Rutherford Aris's chemical engineering and paleography careers, but Aris was more than just a chemical engineer and a paleographer. He put the arts and sciences together and was truly an interdisciplinary thinker. He believed that engineers were aided by thinking interdisciplinarily, as he did. He started a series of seminars in the Minnesota engineering department that addressed the arts and the sciences.

 

He wrote a number of essays on the interaction of the arts and the sciences and on the interplay between his specialties of mathematical modeling and paleography (and on the interplay between mathematical modeling and poetry!). But his interests ranged far more widely than even his widely disparate specialties.

He had a poem on literary criticism published in the journal New Literary History. He co-wrote an article in a technology journal on Anglo-Saxon military theory. He even wrote an essay in the form of a conversation between a mathematician, an engineer, and a paleographer (his three interests) on the importance of approaching mathematical modeling from multiple points of view.

And h was also famous for a prank that he pulled on Who’s Who in 1974. His biography was already in Who’s Who, but, in the early 1970’s, Who’s Who began sending him a biographical data sheet to fill out in the name of Aris Rutherford. He wrote back, telling them that there was no such person, but his protests did not register. Who’s Who continued to request a bio from Aris Rutherford, and finally Aris sent one.

Aris Rutherford made it into the 1974-75 edition of Who’s Who. Aris Rutherford was a Scottish prodigy and a serious tippler. He obtained his degree at the age of 18 from the Strath Spey and Glenlivet Institute of Distillation Engineering, and subsequently had such positions as the chief design engineer and tester for the Strath Spey Distillation Company and visiting professor of distillation practice at the Technological Institute of the Aegean. He wrote three books, including American Football: A Guide for Interested Scots. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the hoax was shortly exposed, and Aris Rutherford lasted only one year in Who's Who.

For his renown in fields as far removed as chemical engineering and paleography, Rutherford Aris makes our list. He was a proselytizing polymath who was devoted to the connection between the arts and the sciences, scattering classical references throughout his engineering papers.