P. Roger Gillette ’37

Physicist and engineer P. Roger Gillette ’37 died on March 2 at age 99 in Salem, Oregon. He grew up in Mount Vernon, the son of Cornell College instructor C. Edgar Gillette and Celia Rodgers Gillette 1917.

After receiving his doctorate in physics from the University of Illinois, he conducted classified military research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during World War II. He held jobs as a research engineer and a physicist from 1945-50. From 1950 to 1992, he served as senior research physicist at Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) International in Menlo Park, California. After his official retirement at age 75, he devoted himself to scholarship in the field of post-traditional theology and the ongoing dialogue between science (encompassing all disciplines of science) and religion (including all manifestations of belief, both Eastern and Western).

Gillette established the Rogers-Gillette Fund for Student-Faculty Research. In recent years, it has helped fund the Cornell Summer Research Institute.

The Gillette family produced numerous Cornellians, including his brothers Charles E. Gillette ’42 and James R. Gillette ’47, a sister in-law, Gwyneth Young Gillette ’40, uncles Earl L. Gillette 1904 and Harry A. Gillette 1906, and a cousin, Cornell emeritus professor of biology T. Edwin Rogers ’39. He is survived by a niece. His wife and two children are deceased.