Marion Hill founded SRI’s highly successful program on the synthesis of explosive and energetic compounds and was director of the Chemistry Laboratory for 18 years. Both these groups are still enriching SRI both scientifically and financially. Marion Hill was recruited to SRI in 1960 by Tom Poulter, who was attracted by Marion Hill’s distinguished career at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory (NOL) where he was honored by NOL for developing new high energy fuels for Polaris missiles.
At SRI, Marion Hill organized a small synthesis group, initially to provide energetic materials for United Technology. During the following five years, his group of two expanded to a department of twelve, conducting basic and applied research on energetic materials for half a dozen federal agencies including NOL, ONR, AFOSR, and LLNL as well as Lockheed. Many of the programs were done under contracts lasting 10 to 15 years and resulted in major contributions to new propulsion and explosive systems used during the Cold War. The ONR program developed basic understanding of NF2 compounds; work for the AF Rocket Laboratory led to discovery of NF4+ and the LLNL-supported research on nitrofluoro alcohols provided novel compounds used for missile fuels.
Marion Hill’s legacy, the energetic materials program, continues in 2003 to contribute to national defense as well as to SRI’s reputation and financial health. The important work of Jeff Bottaro and coworkers in the discovery of new, safer explosives and propellants such ammonium dinitramide (ADN) has also led to commercial licenses to several companies around the world.
The Chemistry Laboratory was founded by Marion Hill in 1967 to integrate in one research organization many groups doing chemical research at SRI. Under his leadership, the laboratory grew to over 100 scientists, who were not just widely respected in the scientific community, but produced almost $20 million in net income on contracts worth about $70 million before Marion Hill retired in 1984. The Chemistry Laboratory is another of Marion Hill’s legacies, now represented by several laboratories in Physical Sciences that continue to contribute to SRI’s reputation for strong scientific achievement.