1999 Buessem Award Recipient

James V. Biggers received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, and his Ph.D. in Metallurgy from Penn State in 1966. He worked in industry for 10 years before returning to Penn State’s Materials Research Laboratory, where his first teaching assignment was to take over Dr. Buessem’s course in Electroceramics.

Dr. Biggers set up the ceramic processing group in 1969; they built furnaces and other equipment necessary to bring ceramic processing capabilities to the Materials Research Laboratory. The group built the first tape casting and hot isostatic pressing equipment at Penn State and were largely responsible for setting the tone for process orientation at MRL.

Jim Biggers founded the Center for Dielectric Studies in 1983 and served as its Director until 1988. His primary research interests during his years at MRL were electroceramics for capacitor applications and thick film circuits.

Jim is a fellow of the American Ceramic Society, ISHM, and Sigma Xi and holds several patents in the area of ferroelectric materials. He has published over 100 papers and 3 books on thick film materials.

The Center for Dielectric Studies presented Dr. Biggers with the Wilhelm R. Buessem Award at the CDS Awards Dinner on November 19, 1999.