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2019 Distinguished Service to Industry, Commerce, or Education Award – Michael Gold

Michael Gold, ’60 B.S., ’62 M.Eng.

Founder & President, Gold Metallurgical Services, LLC
Former Section Head, Materials Technology and Standards, Babcock & Wilcox
Fellow of ASTM
Life Fellow of ASME

A graduate of Hillhouse High School in New Haven, Michael Gold graduated with a BS in physics in 1960. His career as a material engineer was set in motion in his sophomore year by his Bursary Job in the Metallurgy Department in Hammond Laboratory, under the direction of Professor W. D. Robertson. Dr. Robertson was a consultant to the aircraft industry in Connecticut, and Michael was set to work mounting, polishing, and etching failed aluminum fittings for Dr. Robertson’s microscopic examination. Michael received his M.Eng. degree in materials engineering from Yale in 1962.

After three years of further study at Cornell, Michael went to work at the Alliance Research Center of Babcock & Wilcox in northeastern Ohio. There, he worked on developing new materials for tube mill piercer points. In this capacity, he discovered why B&W couldn’t break down 347 stainless steel ingots on their 40” blooming mill, leading to significant process improvements. In 1970, he transferred to B&W’s Boiler Division in Barberton, Ohio, where he became head of the Materials Technology and Standards Section.

His second career began as a volunteer member of the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Committee of the ASME and of Committee A01 on Steel, Stainless Steel, and Related Alloys and Subcommittee B02.07 on Nickel and Cobalt and their alloys of ASTM. He was elected as Chair of the ASME BPV Committee on Materials and served in that capacity for 17 years, and he was a Member of the Main Committee and the Executive Committee of the Code. He was the user sponsor of over a dozen ASTM material specifications used in the boiler and pressure vessel industry.

Among his accomplishments for ASME, Michael helped develop the first edition of Section II Part D, Materials Properties of the Boiler Code; he established the Subgroup on International Materials in order to ease the adoption of foreign materials into the Boiler Codes; he formed the Working Group on Data Analysis and fostered the development of computer programs used to establish allowable stresses for the materials permitted by the boiler and pressure vessel code; he established the Working Group on Creep-Strength Enhanced Ferritic Steels to write rules for the safe use of the meta-stable 9 Cr-1 Mo-Cb alloys and similar alloys at high temperatures in boilers and pressure vessels; and he promoted the development of rules that would prevent the catastrophic and sometimes-fatal creep-Crack growth window blow-out failures of high pressure steam lines in boilers. Michael received several ASME Certificates of Acclamation, was elected a Fellow of ASME in 1992, and was awarded the ASME J. Hall Taylor Medal in 2003. He received the ASTM Award of Merit and was named a Fellow of ASTM in 2011.

Michael was the author or co-author of several ASME technical papers and of the materials chapter of B&W book, Steam. He holds three US patents. He retired from B&W in 2002, but continued his career as a consultant, first for B&W and later, primarily for Nippon Steel Sumitomo Metals Corp. of Japan.

Michael has consistently demonstrated leadership and commitment to the safety and standardization of multiple materials and components in the high pressure steam and boiler industry, impacting all of our lives and setting a high bar for his peers. For these reasons and more, we are proud to honor Michael Gold as the 2019 recipient of the YSEA Award for Distinguished Service to Industry, Commerce or Education.