Gee, Edwin Austin, 1920-2013

Edwin A. Gee did his undergraduate work at George Washington University and received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland in 1948. During World War II, he was an assistant chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Bureau of Mines. In 1948 he was hired by the Du Pont Company and, after a decade of working in the sales division of the Pigments Department, he became an assistant director, and then director of the Development Department and in 1970 an Executive Committee member. In 1960 President Crawford Greenewalt put Gee in charge of a diversification program which eventually became known as the "New Ventures Program." As part of this effort, Gee initiated a program to develop marketable products from the large number of analytical and process instruments that Du Pont manufactured for its own use. This project led the company into the medical instrument field but was otherwise seen as a failure in terms of return on investment, and it was discontinued int the late 1960s. In late 1974 Gee's efforts were rewarded with the establishment of a Corporate Plans Dept. and the consolidation of most research into a Central Research & Development Dept. In 1978 Gee retired from Du Pont to become a director of International Paper Company.