S. Donald Stookey | CorningWare inventor, 99

S. Donald Stookey, 99, the scientist who forever changed cooking with the invention of CorningWare, a versatile glass found in millions of American kitchens, died Tuesday at an assisted-living center in Rochester, N.Y. His son, Donald Stookey, said he died from complications after hip surgery.

Mr. Stookey joined Corning Glass Works in New York in 1940, the same year he graduated with a doctorate in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He immersed himself in research, studying the complex chemistry of oxidation and its effects on glass, says a company biography.

In 1952, he placed a plate of glass into an oven to heat it, but the oven malfunctioned. Instead of heating to about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, the oven shot up to more than 1,600 degrees. Mr. Stookey expected to find a molten mess. Instead, he found an opaque, milky-white plate. As he was removing it from the oven, his tongs slipped, and the plate fell to the floor. But instead of shattering, it bounced. He had discovered glass ceramics, which Corning patented as Pyroceram, a type of glass so strong that the military used it in guided missile nose cones.

By the end of the 1950s, the work led to CorningWare, one of the company's most successful product lines. It could go from the oven to the dinner table and into the refrigerator or freezer. In 2010, Mr. Stookey was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. - AP