Lowell Coulter; built BU's chemistry department

The department itself, including Dr. Coulter among the faculty, was tiny, but that changed steadily over the dozen years he served as chairman.

"He was outstanding as a member and leader of the department," said Norman Lichtin, university professor emeritus and professor of chemistry emeritus who succeeded Dr. Coulter as chairman of BU's chemistry department. "He did a great deal to build the department, both in terms of physical resources and faculty."

Dr. Coulter - who taught at BU for more than 35 years and served as a group leader on the Manhattan Project, which led to the first atomic bomb - died of heart failure May 2 in Clark House, a nursing center in Westwood. He was 95 and previously lived in West Newton for many years.

"Lowell Coulter actually became chair of the department the same year I was hired," said Alfred Prock, a chemistry professor who was one of Dr. Coulter's early hires. "He was very interested in building up the sciences and the chemistry part of what was then called the College of Liberal Arts. The name science wasn't even part of the title."

While leading the department until 1973, Dr. Coulter recruited 21 faculty members to teach and conduct research, BU said in announcing his death.

"When Al Prock and I arrived in 1961, we were numbers nine and 10," said Morton Hoffman, professor emeritus of chemistry. "There were eight people in the department before us. It was active enough, but its focus was mainly on teaching. We were brought in by Lowell to teach in the new, at that time, six-year liberal arts medical program."

At that time, "BU was mostly a commuter college," Prock recalled. "He worked very hard for years to bring in science courses and to make them more important in the general curriculum of the college."

Under Dr. Coulter's leadership, "there was a shift in the department's focus, not away from teaching, but further into research," Hoffman said. "Many, many faculty members were recruited during his tenure as chair, and the department as we know it now is a result of that legacy. Not only the quality of teaching, but the research work in chemistry and the grants that have been obtained and the engagement of undergraduate and graduate students in research."

Dr. Coulter also conducted his own research at BU. A physical chemist, he studied the thermodynamic properties of compounds known as clathrates, which trap other molecules.

As a result of his research, Dr. Coulter was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For him, chemistry was the foundation upon which so much else is built.

"He said the reason he chose chemistry, and why it appealed to him, was that it's the basis of all life," said his daughter, Andrea Hoffman of Fernadina Beach, Fla., and Weston. "He said, 'If you get down to the bottom of life, to its finest elements, it's chemistry.' "

Dr. Coulter was born and raised in Marion, Ohio, where his family struggled financially. He postponed the start of college for a year in the early part of the Great Depression, earning money by working at an ice cream shop.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, then went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he received a master's.

In 1937, he married Leona Newcomb, whom he had met at a freshman mixer at Heidelberg, now called Heidelberg University.

After receiving a doctorate in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, he taught at the University of Idaho before moving in 1942 to Boston University, where he remained until retiring in 1977.

During World War II, he was invited to contribute to the Manhattan Project. "Somebody recruited him over strawberry shortcake at Durgin Park," his daughter said. "He was a group leader for the section that was in Dayton, Ohio."

There, with other scientists and researchers, Dr. Coulter helped develop the trigger that detonated the bombs. The assignment brought him back to his home state for a year or more, his daughter said.

Dr. Coulter said little about his Manhattan Project research. "When he worked on the project, my mother did not know," his daughter said. "When they said secret, he listened."

Returning to BU, the Coulters lived for many years in West Newton and later in Westwood, where Dr. Coulter could be just as exacting about his gardens as he was about science.

He had two greenhouses and turned more than an acre into a precise garden, said his son, Michael of Marstons Mills. Dr. Coulter entered some of his flowers, usually camellias, into competition at the New England Flower Show.

The Coulters often opened their home to colleagues and students.

"I have fond memories of him and of playing croquet on the lawn of his house, where he lived in Westwood with Leona," Morton Hoffman said. "The department was a very warm and close-knit group at that time, despite the fact that it was growing very, very quickly, and I think that is all due to Lowell's character."

Hoffman added that at one point, he was offered a position at another institution, "and I remember asking myself, 'Why would I want to leave such a nice department with all these nice people?' "

Prock recalled that when he was looking for a teaching position "and BU became interested in me, I decided to come and see it for myself, and I stayed with Lowell."

"He actually had me stay in his house, and he was a very wonderful, warm host," he said.

"I thought that his tenure was a very fine and very important one for the department," Prock added. "I would say he got the ball rolling to have the department we have today. When he left, something important left."

In addition to his daughter and son, Dr. Coulter leaves four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Services are private.