1992 Tyler Laureate
Perry L. McCarty
Perry L. McCarty, Silas H. Palmer Professor of Civil Engineering at
Stanford University, is honored as the world's leading environmental engineer
working to protect the Earth's water resources. His outstanding research
contributions have formed the basis for significant improvements in water
quality, wastewater treatment and reclamation, and groundwater decontamination.
Dr. McCarty's record of initiating new lines of inquiry has more than once defined a new subarea of environmental problem analysis. His investigations in biochemistry, microbiology and organic chemistry are astonishing in their breadth and ingenuity of experimental verification; and they have stood the test of time.
Scientific principles and innovative microbiological processes developed by Dr. McCarty established anaerobic digestion as a reliable, costeffective, energyproducing alternative for wastewater treatment. His unified theory for biological treatment is used widely as the basis for the design and operation of waste treatment throughout the world.
In the mid1960s, Dr. McCarty applied thermo dynamics to estimate maximum yields and growth rates in microbial systems. This work provided a scientific base for limits on synthesis and growth rates of a wide variety of processes involving microorganisms, including iron and manganese oxidation, nitrate and sulfate reduction, nitrogen fixation and methane fermentation. These insights are used extensively by environmental biologists, chemists, and engineers in the study of biological processes in natural environments. McCarty's scholarship has changed fundamentally our concepts of the rates at which biological processes take place and modem environmental engineering technology derives largely from this work.
These achievements were accomplished with systems in which microorganisms were grown in suspension. Dr. McCarty turned to the theoretical aspects of microbial growth attached to solid surfaces and attained a coherent concept for growth in attached bacterial films. This revolutionary concept created a new direction of research in environmental engineering; and biofilm processes are the basis for stateoftheart waste treatment technology today.
The provision of clean drinking water will, in the viewof many, be a major preoccupation of the 1990s. Water supplies are becoming increasingly polluted, heightening concern for human health. The EPA's Superfund program has located more than a thousand severely polluted sites nationwide, bearing testimony to the need for research breakthroughs.
Dr. McCarty has devoted himself to improving the understanding the behavior of organic contaminants in soils and ground water. He discovered that many manmade chemicals thought to persist in the environment for decades were in fact disappearing through the action of microorganisms; and he realized that microorganisms with unique chemicaldegrading abilities do exist in soils and groundwater, and sometimes at great depths. Efforts to better understand the actions of these organisms and to use them in engineered processes are now underway. Dr. McCarty has made seminal contributions to the knowledge of contaminant behavior in groundwater aquifers and sediments by developing concepts for modeling the behavior of microorganisms attached to solid surfaces in the form of bioflms.
Professor McCarty received his B.S. in Civil Engineering at Wayne State University and earned M.S. and Sc.D. degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He taught at MIT before joining the faculty at Stanford in 1962. He also has taught at Harvard; the University of Cape Town, South Africa; and in Venezuela. Dr. McCarty has served on the National Research Council in numerous capacities, including as vicechair of the Environmental Studies Board and as a member of the Commission on Natural Resources.
Among the numerous honors Dr. McCarty has received are the Water Environment Federations' Harrison P. Eddy Research Award (1962 and 1977) and the Thomas Camp Award (1975), the American Society of Civil Engineers' Walter L. Huber Research Prize (1964), the American Water Works Association's Research Prize (1989), and the Association of Environmental Engineering Professors' Distinguished Faculty Award (1966). He was honored with membership in the National Academy of Engineering in 1977, named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1980, and made an honorary member of the American Water Works Association in 1981 and the Water Environment Federation in 1989.