George Pharr

Six hundred of UT Knoxville Chancellor’s Professor George Pharr’s research worlds would fit within the diameter of a human hair. But the nanoscale materials he studies now figure largely in modern medicine, space exploration, computer hard drives and everyday products like tennis rackets.

For inspiration about his field, he can just look across the dining room table at his wife, Marilyn, who has an artificial heart valve.

“It’s made of pyrolytic carbon, a form of carbon made by decomposing methane gas at high temperatures,” he says.

Pharr himself has an artificial lens in one of his eyes—also a product of materials science.

His selection as a Chancellor’s Professor, the university’s highest permanent academic honor, recognizes his dedicated teaching, his countless research publications and his internationally recognized leadership in the field of materials science.

Two things motivate him most: scientific curiosity and those moments when he knows he’s helped a student.

His research output is astounding, and he admits it’s nice to be recognized as a leader and have his work cited. But he’s humble about his own creative process.

“I’ve had my two best moments of scientific discovery while mowing the lawn.” Both of them, he says, were about the experimental measurement of properties.

Pharr, who’s been at UT for 20 years, also works hard to recruit students into the materials science program. The field used to be known as metallurgy. That was before the advent of so many new engineered materials.

“Until I got to Rice as an undergraduate, I didn’t even know about materials science,” he says.

“Even now, engineering students starting at UT often haven’t heard of materials science,” he admits. “That’s why we try to get them interested when they first get here and while they’re still in high school if possible.”

In addition to his teaching and research duties and his role as department head in UT Materials Science and Engineering Department, Pharr holds a joint faculty appointment with nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which is managed by UT in partnership with Battelle. It is more than an honorary appointment: with it comes access to top research tools and the role of deputy director of the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials (JIAM), scheduled for construction on UT’s new Cherokee Farm campus.

He says the UT-ORNL partnership is of great benefit.

“Materials science is a strength that really distinguishes ORNL from other labs,” he said.

Pharr calls himself a “chalk and talk” type teacher. In class, he begins with underlying math principles, then guides students to find relatively simple solutions to problems.

With students, he emphasizes the personal approach—something he learned from at Rice from his mentor, Franz Brotzen, who, now in his 90s, still teaches and conducts research.

“He knew students by name and would even invite them to his home for dinner,” Pharr says. “Franz is just a totally decent human being. To this day, we’re good friends.”

Pharr and his wife Marilyn Walker Pharr, a graduate of the UT College of Communications, have two sons: Matthew, 22, who is now working on a Ph.D. in Mechanics at Harvard; and Adam, 19, a civil engineering major at Stanford. The Pharr’s have strong ties to East Tennessee. Marilyn’s family has farmed in the Maryville area since 1790.