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Photograph of Warren and Katharine Schlinger
Science History Institute Collections

Oral history interview with Warren G. Schlinger

  • 2002-Jul-24

Oral history interview with Warren G. Schlinger

  • 2002-Jul-24

Warren G. Schlinger begins his oral history interview by tracing his family heritage and discussing his introduction to chemistry: a Gilbert Chemistry Set owned by a friend. While a young man, Schlinger began to attend public lectures at California Institute of Technology [Caltech] where he eventually was accepted and completed his education, earning a doctorate in mechanical and chemical engineering. Schlinger spent the entirety of his career at the research lab in Montebello, California. Schlinger recollects the history of Texaco. He shares aspects of his private life-stories of meeting his wife Katharine, the successes of their three children, and the Warren and Katharine Schlinger Foundation that the Schlinger family established and manages.

Property Value
Interviewee
Interviewer
Place of interview
Format
Genre
Extent
  • 53 pages
Language
Subject
Rights Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Rights holder
  • Science History Institute
Credit line
  • Courtesy of Science History Institute

About the Interviewer

Arnold Thackray founded the Chemical Heritage Foundation and served the organization as president for 25 years. He is currently CHF’s chancellor. Thackray received MA and PhD degrees in history of science from Cambridge University. He has held appointments at Cambridge, Oxford University, and Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1983 Thackray received the Dexter Award from the American Chemical Society for outstanding contributions to the history of chemistry. He served for more than a quarter century on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the founding chairman of the Department of History and Sociology of Science and is currently the Joseph Priestley Professor Emeritus.

Institutional location

Department
Collection
Oral history number 0259

Related Items

Interviewee biographical information

Born
  • May 29, 1923
  • Los Angeles, California, United States
Died
  • February 10, 2017
  • Pasadena, California, United States

Education

Year Institution Degree Discipline
1944 California Institute of Technology BS Applied Chemistry
1946 California Institute of Technology MS Chemical Engineering
1949 California Institute of Technology PhD Chemical and Mechanical Engineering

Professional Experience

California Institute of Technology

  • 1949 to 1953 Instructor and Research Fellow

Texaco Montebello Research Laboratory

  • 1953 to 1957 Chemical Engineer
  • 1957 to 1961 Senior Chemical Engineer
  • 1961 to 1969 Supervisor, Research
  • 1969 to 1981 Manager
  • 1981 to 1987 Associate Director, Gasification
  • 1987 to 2003 Consultant

Honors

Year(s) Award
1976 Technical Achievement Award, AIChE, Southern California Section
1981 Chemical Engineering Practice Award, AIChE
1985 KFA Achievement Award, Electric Power Research Institute
1991 National Academy of Engineering

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Complete transcript of interview

PDF — 345 KB
schlinger_wg_0259_FULL.pdf

The published version of the transcript may diverge from the interview audio due to edits to the transcript made by staff of the Center for Oral History, often at the request of the interviewee, during the transcript review process.

Complete Interview Audio File Web-quality download

7 Separate Interview Segments Archival-quality downloads