Donald J. Koestler Sr. died at age 79 on May 9, 2016
Don was a founding member of the North American Mixing Forum while working for Rohm and Haas (now part of Dow). While he purposely never held office, his advice as a board member was wise and helped us to establish a robust organization. Don retired after forty years and continued to be active serving as adjunct faculty at Drexel University.
The following is a tribute from Aaron Sarafinas of Dow:
As many of you know, Don was my mentor for many years. During his 40-year career at RandH, he was one of the finest (if not the finest) engineer we had. He was the finest engineer I ever saw. More than anyone, he was the inspiration and driving force for the growth of our mixing capabilities at RandH. He was responsible for the creation of our Process Development Network and our “virtual” management of technology. He was the key person who got me into the facilitating of the whole brainstorm/peer review thing, which led to a multitude of “Generate & Reduce Options” opportunities for me. His passion for networking and systems thinking was unsurpassed. His mantra was always “understand your process, understand your process, understand your process.” So if you ever wonder why I’m such a pain about asking questions and using different techniques to get people to think through and articulate what they believe is going on in their process, blame Don for being such an inspiring teacher.
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