About Bob:

Robert M. Fitch
12 Codorniz Drive
El Prado, NM 87529
E-Mail: bob@bobfitch.com

Bob Fitch is President of the consulting firm, Fitch & Associates, based in Taos, New Mexico. He retired
as Senior Vice President for R & D and Chief Scientific Officer Worldwide for SC Johnson in Racine, Wisconsin
in 1990. Prior to that he was Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science for 15 years at the University of
Connecticut in Storrs. In earlier years he held positions at North Dakota State University and at The Marshall
Laboratories of DuPont in Philadelphia. He was responsible for establishing the academic polymer science
programs at both North Dakota State and UConn. He holds patents and has published over 100 papers
and three books in the fields of Polymer Colloids and polymers at interfaces. His advanced textbook, entitled
Polymer Colloids, A Comprehensive Introduction, published by Academic Press, appeared in April, 1997.

A new book, entitled GASP! They’re Destroying Our Security Blanket, has been released by Tate
Publishing in November, 2015. It’s a handbook for the layman on global warming and climate change.

Fitch holds an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, both in chemistry.

His research interests have included: mechanisms of particle formation in polymer colloids and their
surface chemistry, chemical reactions at the interface in polymer colloids, controlled release of drugs, dielectric
spectroscopy of model colloids, and the behavior of polymers at liquid interfaces.

He has served as consultant to major corporations such as DuPont, Kodak, Hercules, Borg-Warner,
American Cyanamid and SC Johnson. Fitch also has been a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin,
the Norwegian Institute of Technology (as Senior Fulbright Scholar), the University of Bristol, England
(as Science Research Council Senior Visiting Fellow), and the Institute Charles Sadron in Strasbourg, France.
He has chaired two Gordon Research Conferences and has served on the Board of Trustees of the Gordon
Conferences.

Fitch has been deeply involved in science education for many years. He was inducted into the
Southeastern Wisconsin Educators Hall of Fame for his work in helping to establish the Education/Industry
Science Alliance in that region under National Science Foundation sponsorship. He was the founding chairman
of the National Industry Council for Science Education which later became a part of the Corporate Council
for Mathematics and Science Education of the National Academy of Sciences. This involved senior technology
officers of major technology-based corporations in supporting best practice in science education. He has
served on the Management Team of the National Institute for Science Education, a research-oriented entity
supported by a $10M grant from the National Science Foundation. Fitch was Chairman of the Advisory
Board of the National Science Resources Center, a joint project of the Smithsonian Institution and the
National Academy of Sciences. This last focusses on experiential learning in the early grades by means
of the development and distribution of laboratory and instructional resources, leadership training at local
school districts and regional centers, and the involvement of industry support.

The arts also figure prominently in Fitch’s life: he is former Treasurer and then Chairman of the Board
of Taos Talking Pictures, unique in that it had a strong educational component in media literacy; and he was
Vice Chairman of the Board of the Taos Institute of Arts; and he served on the Board of the Taos Chamber
Music Group. Avocational interests include skiing, hiking, photography - especially of alpine wildflowers [click

on the “Alpine Wildflowers” section heading at the top of this page.]
- and the collection of antique scientific instruments.

Quotations

“When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared; what thousands of disinterested* moral lives lie buried in its mere foundations; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness – then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of this private dream!”   

1. -    -    William James in The Will to Believe
   

* - in the sense of “unbiased”