Robert Kunin, 90, scientist
Robert Kunin, 90, a former scientist at Rohm & Haas and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, died of complications from pneumonia on Tuesday at Greenwood House, a nursing home in Ewing Township, N.J.
Robert Kunin, 90, a former scientist at Rohm & Haas and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, died of complications from pneumonia on Tuesday at Greenwood House, a nursing home in Ewing Township, N.J.
A native of West New York, N.J., Mr. Kunin earned his bachelor's degree at Rutgers University in 1939 and his doctorate in chemistry there in 1942.
He was an associate chemist with the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1942. In 1944 and '45, he was at Columbia University working on the Manhattan Project, the vast national effort to develop the atomic bomb.
A longtime resident of Yardley, Mr. Kunin worked for Rohm & Haas from 1946 to 1976, and retired as development manager of the fluid-process chemicals department to become a consultant.
From 1960 to 1980, Mr. Kunin periodically lectured at Penn and at American University in Washington, his son, David, said.
In those same decades, he said, Mr. Kunin was a consultant to the blood-preservation laboratory at Harvard University and, until it was abolished in 1974, to the Atomic Energy Commission.
In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded Mr. Kunin its Howard N. Potts Medal. In the 1970s, he was honored by the London office of the Society of Chemical Industry for his work on ion exchange, his son said, and by the Mexican government for his work on desalinization there.
He patented an ion-exchange purification process that filtered water for home use, his son said. "If you used tap water for any purpose, in your coffeepot or your steam irons - this was in the late '50s, early '60s - it corroded the metal," his son said.
In addition to his son, Mr. Kunin is survived by a daughter, Anne Leibowitz; two grandsons; and two great-grandchildren. His wife, Edith, died in 1988.
Private services and burial were scheduled for today.
