David A. Duke, a Park City resident who retired last year as chief technical officer of Corning Inc., has been honored by the American Chemical Society for 35 years of developing and overseeing projects ranging from optical fibers, auto exhaust catalysts and other products.
He received the Earle B. Barnes Award for Leadership in Chemical Research Management, sponsored by Dow Chemical Co., during the society's meeting in San Francisco.Duke said he was hired by Corning in the early 1960s by the person who invented glass ceramics, a product that became Corn-ing-Ware, Corelle ware and nose cones for missiles.
Less than 10 years later, he was put in charge of his own project of developing a ceramic honeycomb that could hold a catalyst to break down gasoline exhaust. Corning's catalytic converter has the biggest market share for automobiles today.
From that he worked on fiber optics, which carry enormous amounts of information over long distances with little signal loss.