Frederick S. Pettit, Harry S. Tack Chair professor (1989-2006) and professor emeritus in the former Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering in the Swanson School of Engineering, died Feb. 25, 2025 at 94.
“He is a stellar figure in the field of high temperature corrosion,” said Brian Gleeson, current Harry S. Tack Chair professor and chair of what is now the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, whom Fred Pettit recruited to Pitt. “He made major contributions.”
Pettit had already established himself as a prominent researcher at Pratt & Whitney when he joined Pitt. “In the literature, his work is still often referenced,” Gleeson noted.
A remembrance from his department notes that “Pettit’s research focused on degradation of materials at elevated temperatures by oxidation, hot corrosion and erosion, and the use of coatings for protection. His work emphasized high-performance, high-temperature materials as superalloys, intermetallics, composites and coatings for use in advanced combustion systems. In 2004, the Tenth International Symposium on Superalloys, hosted by The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society, dedicated the proceedings to his research.”
Pettit also co-authored a textbook with Emeritus Prof. Gerald Meier, “Introduction to the High-Temperature Oxidation of Metals.”
Gleeson recalled Pettit as “a very thorough, dedicated teacher” as well as an advisor to many Ph.D. students. He taught until he was 84. “If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what it is,” Gleeson added. “He was just a gentleman and a scholar. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He was a genuine person and a thoughtful mentor.”
One of those whom he mentored was James M. Rakowski, as a Pitt Ph.D. student who is now technical director of ATI’s specialty rolled products. Pettit served on Rakowski’s thesis committee.
“He was maybe a little more professionally oriented” because he started his career outside academia, Rakowski said. “He brought a lot of aerospace super alloy metallurgy experience to Pitt, so we did a lot of things in collaboration with the industry of the gas turbine world. He brought a little bit of practicality to the work we did. We did work in real materials, things that were in service or that were nearing in service” — commercial alloys as opposed to next-generation materials.”
“He was always a really good, thorough professor. He was a serious guy but he had a sense of humor. He would put on a serious face but you could tell he was enjoying himself. He made sure you understood how things worked and that you understood the material thoroughly.” As an advisor, he said, Pettit “was teaching us to become grown-up individuals. Without being hard on us, he taught us how to show up on time, how to be professional, how to be good future academics and/or engineers.
“He was gentle but insistent that we learned how to manage our day-to-day. He was interested in our future development and I found that very helpful moving forward and in everything I've done.”
Pettit even found contract work for students who needed help with income and talked one student out of quitting after the student had lost confidence in his own abilities, Rakowski remembered.
One annual engineering conference Pettit attended with his students, including Rakowski, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire featured a mile-long uphill race for conference participants. Students in their 20s kidded Pettit about beating their professor, who was decades older, Rakowski said. The students would start off running, while Pettit followed at a jog, but “by the end he had passed every single one of them.”
Overall, he concluded: “You knew he had expectations and you did not want to let him down. You knew you wanted to live up to his level. He made all of us better.”
Frederick S. Pettit, was born on March 10, 1930, in Nuangola, Pa. He received his bachelor of science degree from Yale, then started his career at Westinghouse before serving as a Marine Corps officer. Returning to earn his Ph.D. from Yale, he took a postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, then began work as a research scientist for Pratt & Whitney.
After retirement from Pitt, he taught graduate classes in thermodynamics at the University of Connecticut.
He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Lou-Jean; sons Nicholas, Theodore (Carrie) and John (Kathy); grandchildren Shenandoah Avalos (Alex), Savannah, Nathaniel, Charles, Matthew, Grace, Daniel and Zachary; great-granddaughter Lyra Avalos; and sister-in-law Adele Corso.
Memorial gifts are suggested to the Charles Andrew Pettit Scholarship Fund, University of Pittsburgh, PO Box 640093, Pittsburgh, PA 15264.
— Marty Levine