Many of ASNT’s awards are named after specific people, but have you ever wanted to learn more about them? When Periodicals Editor Jill Ross learned that the Membership and Engagement Department gets questions about them all the time, she decided to take a trip down memory lane in the May issue of Materials Evaluation. This article tells the stories of the people behind the ASNT awards.
Lester/Mehl Honor Lecture*
The author of more than 25 papers on various phases of industrial radiography, Horace H. Lester, PhD (1883–1955), was considered to be the father of what we now know as industrial radiography.
His honors from many associations were numerous. He organized and was chair of Committee E-7 of ASTM for 10 years. He was the recipient of the Henry Marlow Howe Medal in 1925 for work in radiography. In 1943, ASNT named the Lester Lecture after him. He was named the first-ever honorary member of ASNT in 1945. Lester was known as an ever-present help to the Society. He authored numerous articles, fostered NDT techniques, and did seminal work in ASNT committees.
Lester was educated at the Universities of Minnesota, Washington, and Princeton, receiving his PhD with a thesis titled “Electron Emission.” Lester was a research physicist at the Watertown Arsenal from 1922 to 1954, where he inspected products from the Arsenal’s foundry and then weldments. As chief of the Research Division of the Watertown Arsenal during World War II, he assisted in bringing fundamental research to a high point of achievement and international recognition to that arsenal.
In December 1942, he wrote a letter to the Society regarding Vol. 1, No. 2 of Industrial Radiography (which would eventually be renamed Materials Evaluation) in which he said, “I wish to congratulate you on the excellent make-up of the journal and the timeliness and high quality of the contributions.”
Robert F. Mehl, PhD (1898-1976), was best known for his pioneering work in gamma ray radiography for the evaluation of steel castings. ASNT recognized this outstanding achievement by the establishment of the biennial Mehl Honor Lecture commencing in 1941.
In a statement, ASNT said, “The Mehl Honor Lecture was created by ASNT not only to establish a lasting monument for an outstanding man in science and technology, but also to exemplify for future generations the value and importance to mankind of inspiring, devoted, and creative individuals. Mehl is recognized and honored for his pioneer spirit, his ardent urge to uncover the mysteries and secrets of nature, to make them known to his students, and to apply them in laboratory and industry at home and abroad. The Society for Nondestructive Testing can consider itself blessed that their dedicated officers conceived this idea prior to the Society’s first charter convention, and we have all reason to be proud that Professor Mehl consented to this exemplary recognition of his contributions to science and education at large, and to the nondestructive testing profession specifically.”
Charles W. Briggs, PhD, a close coworker of Mehl at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, gave the first Mehl Honor Lecture at a meeting of the Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, on 17 October 1941.
*The Lester Honor Lecture and Mehl Honor Lecture were separate recognitions, given every other year, until 2018.
Philip D. Johnson Honorary Member Award
In 1939, Philip D. Johnson was working as a radiographer at the Boston Naval Shipyard. It was there that he recognized the need for an association to represent the radiography professions. In August 1941, eight individuals joined Johnson in Boston to begin formalizing the Society. At their first meeting, the new society voted to call itself the American Industrial Radium and X-ray Society. Six years later, this was changed to the Society for Nondestructive Testing (SNT).
The young society had three powerful attributes to start with: its founders, its journal, and its members—all of which revolved in some way around Johnson. Johnson was a motivator and a doer. As one of the society’s officers, he served as the first (and only) secretary from 1941 to 1965. His organizational strengths included an ability to anticipate problems and to convince the Board of Directors to do something about them in advance. As a society member, Johnson did a great deal of work in SNT’s early years. He was willing to undertake so much of the society’s volunteer labor that it is safe to say that virtually every NDT practitioner today has directly benefitted from Johnson’s volunteer spirit. Among his many volunteer tasks was the editorship of the society’s technical journal (which is now Materials Evaluation).
As the Society grew, so did the breadth of Johnson’s involvement. Carlton Lutts, one of the founders of ASNT, once said, “That [SNT] was launched at all is a tribute to Johnson and his vision and courage. That this tender association endured at all during its first years is to the undying credit of Johnson and his small band of faithful supporters. All honor to their names.”
When Johnson relinquished the society secretary’s job, after nearly 25 years, it was to become the managing director of SNT’s headquarters staff. He held this post for nine years, until 1974, when he announced his retirement at the summer board meeting, following more than 30 years of loyal service to the organization he had founded. Johnson was made an honorary member of ASNT (then SNT) in 1957. He died in 1997 at the age of 84.
Robert B. Oliver Scholarship
With degrees in metallurgy and chemical engineering, Robert B. Oliver’s early career included teaching posts at Michigan College of Mining and Technology and the University of Alabama. He went on to research and management positions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.C. Radiation Laboratory, Aerojet General, and finally to the Stellite Division of the Cabot Corp. until his retirement in 1978.
Oliver joined ASNT in 1942. He served as ASNT President in 1960, was a Charter Fellow of the Society (class of 1973), and received ASNT’s Honorary Member Award in 1979. In 1959, Oliver was instrumental in the formation of the Technical Council, recruiting the initial officers and writing the rules of conduct. As national conference chair in 1960, he instituted simultaneous technical sessions, and in 1962, he instituted the custom of nominations based on geographic areas. He was also a contributing editor to the NDT Handbook.
When Oliver retired from Cabot Corp. in 1978, the company made a US$1000 cash scholarship grant to ASNT in his honor. In 1980, the ASNT Board of Directors voted to make the donation the basis for an ongoing student awards program, now known as the Robert B. Oliver Scholarship. Oliver died in 1981. Today, the scholarship is valued at US$2500 and can be awarded to up to three students annually at a US university, college, technical school, or company whose primary workforce is education.
Lou DiValerio Technician of the Year Award
Louis R. DiValerio remarkably impacted the Society in his 23 years of membership with his dedication and willingness to serve.
According to ASNT Past President Chuck Hellier, “Lou” was the model ASNT member. “He was always there—he rarely missed a local section or a national ASNT meeting. He was dedicated to ASNT and served in so many ways.” His service to the Connecticut Yankee Section earned him the Man of the Year Award in 1987 and the Charles Lamprey Award in 1989.
On the national level, DiValerio was Regional Director, Region 1, for at least six years; vice chair (then chair) of the Regional Directors Division of the Section Operations Council (SOC); and, at the time of his death, was vice chair of the SOC. He was named an ASNT Fellow (class of 1983). In 1995, the Technician of the Year recognition was renamed after DiValerio.
On a personal note, his colleagues noted that Lou was young at heart. He was always ready to play a practical joke, and everyone was a potential target. His laughter was contagious, and he smiled even in the midst of intense debate. DiValerio died in 1994.
The Lou DiValerio Technician of the Year gives recognition to ASNT members who are deserving technicians, encouraging their continued participation in the Society. In general, the individual’s duties and responsibilities should be similar to those described by SNT-TC-1A for Level I, II, and III personnel.
Robert C. McMaster Gold Medal Award
Robert C. McMaster (1913–1986) is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of NDT. He created the most extensive research program in NDT in the Department of Welding Engineering at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, and edited the first edition (1959) of ASNT’s Nondestructive Testing Handbook. His achievement in compiling (and often rewriting) the contributions to this book is staggering. The manuscript totaled 2700 typed pages, contained 1250 illustrations, and stood 26 in.(660 mm) high when stacked in one place. His efforts led to an award-winning publication that was comprehensive, far reaching, and definitive. Today, the NDT handbooks comprise 13 volumes and are being revised into the fourth edition.
McMaster held 19 patents based on his research in materials evaluation. The patents covered methods of X-ray sterilization of food, an X-ray television imaging system, piezoelectric-powered flash X-ray systems, several sonic power devices intended for heavy industrial application, a magnetic reaction test device based on the Hall effect, and xeroradiography, a process widely used in mammography.
McMaster had a sophisticated perspective on the significance of NDT in the context of the sciences and on the importance of NDT to society. He published more than 300 technical papers reporting his research and increasingly emphasizing management responsibilities and ethical philosophy in the application of NDT and engineering. He saw NDT as being not merely the testing of industrial materials, but a broad family of technologies that extended human powers of perception—technologies including noninvasive medical diagnostics, geophysical sensing, meteorological monitoring of the environment, and radiometric probing of the heavens themselves. His humane vision of the NDT profession is one of his many legacies.
McMaster is an ASNT Past President (1952) and received various ASNT awards: Mehl Honor Lecture (1950), Coolidge Honor Award (1957), DeForest Award (1959), Fellow (class of 1973), Tutorial Citation (1973), and Honorary Membership (1960). During his retirement, he continued consulting and finished editing the first two volumes of the handbook’s second edition.
The first Gold Medal Award was awarded in 1965 to Philip D. Johnson. McMaster himself received the Gold Medal in 1977. In 1990, the award was renamed to honor McMaster.
Charles N. Sherlock Meritorious Service Award
Charles N. Sherlock (1932–1997) was a prolific volunteer for ASNT. His area of expertise was leak testing (LT), and he wrote a dozen articles for Materials Evaluation on the subject. He was an associate technical editor for ME from 1989 to 1996 and edited two special focus issues during that time. He led seminars on LT and served as LT Committee chair from 1977 to 1989.
He was an active member of the Greater Houston Section for many years and the technical chair of ASNT’s first petroleum industry topical conference (ICPIIT). At the time of his death, he was preparing to lead the fifth ICPIIT.
Sherlock was an active member of the Handbook Development Committee during the production of the Nondestructive Testing Handbook, second edition. He coordinated Vol. 1: Leak Testing, from 1977 until its publication in 1982, contributing to 12 of its 13 sections. Sherlock was also a contributor and reviewer for Vol. 8: Visual and Optical Testing, and technical editor of Vol. 10: Nondestructive Testing Overview. At the time of his death, he was working on the third edition of the LT volume as its technical editor.
Sherlock was an ASNT NDT Level III in six methods: LT, PT, MT, RT, UT, and VT. A charter member of the National Certification Board, he served on that body from 1989 to 1996 and participated in its working groups, including the Level II subcommittee. Without byline, Sherlock authored the four LT supplements to Recommended Practice No. SNT-TC-1A. He also wrote many questions and answers for the ASNT NDT Level III examination.
Sherlock was named an ASNT Fellow in 1982. The same year, he received the Technical Council Award under the sponsorship of the LT Committee. He was the first recipient of the Meritorious Service Award in 1993, which recognizes outstanding service to ASNT. The award was renamed in 2004 in honor of Sherlock.
George L. Pherigo Tutorial Citation
It’s not an overstatement to say that George L. Pherigo (1938–2009) dedicated his life to NDT education. Pherigo was an active ASNT member for many years and a well-known personality within the NDT industry. His accomplishments include developing the first full NDT curriculum offered in the US and starting the NDT program at Ridgewater College (then Hutchinson Vocational Center) in Hutchinson, Minnesota.
Pherigo taught industrial education at the secondary level in California and Minnesota before developing the welding technology program at the post-secondary Hutchinson Vocational Center in Hutchinson, Minnesota. In 1969 he further developed the NDT technology program at Hutchinson. Until February 1977 he was the department head of the NDT program there, which grew during his tenure to over 100 students and seven NDT staff members.
An ASNT member since 1970, Pherigo founded the Minnesota Student Section of ASNT. In 1971, he received the Vocational Teacher of the Year award from the Minnesota Department of Education. His activities later led to his receiving of the ASNT Tutorial Citation in 1974.
In February 1977, Pherigo joined the ASNT staff as manager of personnel development. His responsibilities were to assist in administering the Level III certification program and to work with the Educational Council in developing educational materials and training programs. He later became director of education for ASNT, in which he was responsible for the educational, technical, and certification activities of the Society.
Pherigo was named an ASNT Fellow (class of in 1981) and received the Philip D. Johnson Honorary Member Award in 2003.
The first annual Tutorial Citation was awarded by ASNT in 1971. The citation was renamed in 2010 to honor Pherigo.
William Via Bridge NDT Lifetime Service Recognition
William (Bill) F. Via, Jr. (1947–2020) was instrumental in developing many of the standards and specifications that professionals in the bridge industry across the nation use on a daily basis. As a result of the Silver Bridge collapse in West Virginia in 1967, the Virginia Department of Highways assigned Via to its newly formed group to do material and testing analysis of bridge structural elements.
Via joined ASNT in 1969 and served in many capacities, both on the local and national levels. In 1978, he and several others formed the Old Dominion Section, where Via was the first Section chair. He also served as the Regional Director of Regions 3 and 4 (covering Pennsylvania and Virginia) for many decades and served from 1990 to 1995 as a member of the ASNT Board of Directors.
His distinguished achievements include ASNT Fellow (class of 1983), Meritorious Service Award (1996), Philip D. Johnson Honorary Member Award (2010), the Mentoring Award (2010), 50-Year Member (2019), and the Robert C. McMaster Gold Medal (2020). In 2014 the Bridge NDT Lifetime Service Award, an award that recognizes outstanding voluntary service to the bridge and highway NDT and evaluation industry, was created. In 2015 this award was renamed after Via, and Via was the recipient of the recognition in 2016.
Via was a mentor to many and highly respected and recognized in the NDT industry. “Bill has dedicated his life to improving NDT in bridges and highways through going above and beyond the call of duty at work, by volunteering his time and knowledge over a lifetime,” said Marybeth Miceli, former ASNT Director at Large and one of Via’s mentees.
George C. Wheeler Excellence in Personnel Certification Recognition
George C. Wheeler (1923–2011) was an ASNT Past President (1983) and former senior manager of technical services at ASNT. His main initiatives were focused on certification practices and improving the Society through change.
Wheeler was a longstanding contributing editor to Materials Evaluation, authoring and co-authoring a number of papers, including “A Proposal to Simplify Harmonization of Certifications,” “How to Request Interpretations of ISO 9712,” and “Quantifying the Need for NDE Education of Engineers.” The first SNT-TC-1A Interpretation Panel was led by Wheeler, and the panel’s responses to inquiries appeared in the October 1977 issue of Materials Evaluation, a practice that continues today.
In September 1985, Wheeler published a long paper in Materials Evaluation, detailing the state of certification around the world. He noted that the subject was important, not only because it could inform deliberations in the US but also because events abroad were apt to have long-term consequences in the US and it was incumbent on all members to be aware of what was happening. He then presented the paper at the 11th World Conference on NDT, which was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1985. Wheeler pushed for Level III certification as a prerequisite for employer certification, saying that it “should do much to improve the ethics, image, and performance of our profession.” In October 1986, ASNT established a Standards Writing Committee and appointed Wheeler its chair. In 1989, he published a report as the committee chair for ASNT’s Standard for Personnel Certification.
In other activities, Wheeler contributed to the publication of Pictures and Passages ASNT: 1941–1991 and was also an editor for ASNT’s Nondestructive Testing Handbook, Vol. 4: Radiographic Testing, third edition. Wheeler filled in at ASNT headquarters as the senior manager of technical services in 1993. His commitment to ASNT and NDT led to his induction into the 1975 ASNT Class of Fellows; he also went on to win the Philip D. Johnson Honorary Member Award in 1990.
The first George C. Wheeler Excellence in Personnel Certification was awarded in 2017.
Ward Rummel Engineering Excellence Award
The Engineering Excellence Award was renamed in 2021 in honor of Ward D. Rummel and his pioneering work in NDT engineering, his part in the creation of the ASNT Engineering Council, and for inspiring engineering concepts.
Rummel is best known for the development of the probability of detection (POD) analysis methods. In developing and applying POD, he identified a major gap in NDT discipline and technology: the gap in NDT engineering. He has worked to close that gap, including the successful proposal to the ASNT Board of Directors to establish the Engineering Council.
Rummel graduated with a BS in chemical engineering. He continued graduate work in biophysical chemistry, with original work in DNA and RNA. He joined The Glenn L. Martin Co. in 1972, where he started his career in NDT. His first NDT paper was published in the Journal of Nondestructive Testing where he applied the first principles of science to X-radiography.
Rummel is a well-known and recognized NDT engineer. He has lectured and published in ASNT and internationally. He was a member of the small committee that developed the ASNT NDT Level III program. He wrote the first Basic and Eddy Current Examinations and has proctored Level III examinations in South Korea, Taiwan, and India.
Rummel has been recognized by ASNT with the Fellow Award (class of 1976), Robert C. McMaster Gold Medal Award (2002), Phillip D. Johnson Honorary Member Award (2008), Lester Honor Lecture (2012), and 50-Year Member Recognition (2013).
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Jill Ross is Periodicals Editor at ASNT; jross@asnt.org.
The information for this article was pulled from the Materials Evaluation (ME) archive as well as ASNT’s history book, From Vision to Mission: ASNT 1941 to 2016, published for ASNT’s 75th anniversary. This article was originally published in the May 2022 issue of ME, but we’re publishing it here, too, to include additional content and photos. (Many papers published in ME can be found in the ASNT NDT Library.)
Share Your Memories
Though this article provides interesting information about the history of these awards, the historical record doesn’t always tell the full story.
If you have any personal memories or anecdotes about any of these men, or if you have received any of these awards, please share your stories here.
After taking this trip down ASNT’s memory lane with us, maybe you’ll be inspired to nominate a worthy ASNT member (or yourself) for one of these awards! (The Lou DiValerio award has not been awarded since 2017, and the Robert B. Oliver Scholarship since 2016.)
To see the full listing of awards, instructions on how to apply, and an archive of past winners, please go to asnt.org/awards.
It gladdens my heart to see the biography of my Dad, “Chuck” Sherlock. Feb. 22 will mark 26 years since he passed and am pleased that he is not forgotten. Nearly up to the day he died, Dad was writing and editing a volume of NDT. Many a night he’d call me for some writing expertise, I certainly did not have.Even when he was so sick, he insisted on going to an ASNT meeting in Seattle. My Dad was a humble person, but he exemplified everything important in life. He had high standards and expectations. I AWAYS FELT THE WORLD IS A SAFER PLACE when we aspire to the kind of standards my Dad held. He could be a tough person,but I always has a salt shaker, because I knew he wanted the best.My sincerest appreciation to all the engineers and ASNT for all the work you do. Thank you again for remembering Chuck Sherlock with this Award in his name, he is well worth the honor. Though he probably would not think so. DAD Always acted like it was no big deal. I THINK IT’S A VERY BIG DEAL. THANK YOU ALL!
We’re glad you found the article and enjoyed it! We can assure you he will always be remembered.