Dr. James O. Stoffer, a Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry at Missouri S&T, will deliver the 10th annual Stoffer Lecture at 3 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3, in Room B-10 Bertelsmeyer Hall on the S&T campus. The lecture is free and open to the public. This year’s lecture is titled “Environmentally Safe Aircraft Coatings.”

Stoffer first studied the topic in 1992, when he began research to find an environmentally safe anti-corrosive coating for aircraft to replace the previous standard, chromium, which is toxic. He and his team developed a chrome-free cerium conversion coating that meets military specification guidelines. The university patented the technology and licensed it to Deft Inc. Today the U.S. government uses Stoffer’s primer on nearly all military aircraft and aluminum components in the aerospace industry.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Mount Union College in 1957 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Purdue University in 1961, Stoffer spent two years at Cornell University before joining the Missouri S&T faculty as an assistant professor in 1963. He was named associate professor in 1966, full professor in 1982 and Curators’ Distinguished Professor in 1998. Following his retirement from teaching in 2000, he was named Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry.

Stoffer was instrumental to the development of the university’s polymer chemistry program, one of the first in the United States to be accredited by the American Chemical Society. He taught organic and polymer chemistry to generations of young scholars and was a five-time recipient of the university’s Outstanding Teacher Award and a three-time recipient of the Faculty Excellence Award.

Stoffer served as director of the university’s Materials Research Center from 1992 to 2001. He authored the first scholarly papers on micro-emulsion polymerization, ultrasonically initiated catalyzed polymerization and microwave-initiated polymerization.

He established the lecture series in 2015 with a $50,000 gift using royalties from his environmentally friendly chrome-free aircraft paint. Missouri S&T matched that gift with an additional $50,000 in patent royalties.

“I wanted to let students see what happens when you are successful and show them that they, too, can be successful,” says Stoffer, a pioneer in polymer synthesis who holds numerous patents in various areas of polymer chemistry.

For more information about the Oct. 3 Stoffer Lecture, contact Dr. Amitava Choudhury, associate professor of chemistry at Missouri S&T, at choudhurya@mst.edu.

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