W. Harry Vaughan

William Harry Vaughan Jr. (February 9, 1900 – May 11, 1993) was a professor of ceramic engineering at the Georgia School of Technology and the founder and first director of what is now the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Education Vaughan graduated from Georgia Tech with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering chemistry in 1923. While at Georgia Tech, Vaughan was a member of Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Delta Epsilon; a contributor to The Technique in 1918 and 1919; Assistant Editor (1922) and Editor-in-Chief (1923) of the Blue Print; Captain, R.O.T.C; and President, Emerson Chemical Society. Vaughan subsequently earned a Master of Science in ceramic engineering from the University of Illinois in 1925. The Ceramic Engineering Department is a distant predecessor to Georgia Tech's modern School of Materials Science and Engineering in the Georgia Tech College of Engineering. In Spring 1935, Vaughan was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa.

Establishment of GTRI In 1929, some Georgia Tech faculty members belonging to Sigma Xi started a Research Club at Tech that met once a month. One of the monthly subjects, proposed by Vaughan, was a collection of issues related to Tech, such as library development, and the development of a state engineering station. This group investigated the forty existing engineering experiments at universities around the country, and the report was compiled by Harold Bunger, Montgomery Knight, and Vaughan in December 1929. Their report noted that several similar organizations had been opened across the country at other engineering schools and were successful in local economic development. Vaughan was instrumental in securing GTRI's first permanent building, known then as the Research Building but later expanded and renamed the Thomas Hinman Research Building.