Rolf Dessauer, 98 of Wilmington, DE, died on Sunday, December 22nd at Wilmington Hospital.
He was born in Nürnberg, Germany in 1926. Along with his father, mother and elder brother, he escaped to America by 1939. During Kristallnacht, the family was visited by 25 Nazi SS and SA men who destroyed most of their apartment. Many members of his family were killed in the Holocaust. His family genealogy has been digitized at the Leo Baeck Institute for German-Jewish Studies.
In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Specialized Training Program. By 1946, he taught Central Office Installation at the Signal Corps School, due to special training in electrical engineering.
He graduated from the University of Chicago (BS, MS) in 1949 in chemistry and earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Wisconsin in 1952.
Dr. Dessauer worked for the DuPont Company from 1952 to 1991, inventing some useful chemistry for products in the graphic arts field (DYLUX®, CROMALIN®, CROMACHECK® and RISTON®) and he retired as a Senior Research Associate. He continued as a consultant in photochemistry from 1991 to 2013. He held 29 U.S. Patents and received the Pedersen and Plambeck awards from DuPont. He also published a book on photochemistry and chapters in two other books.
He was a member of the Hagley Foundation and the Chemical Heritage Foundation where he donated a portrait owned by his family of the Nobel Prize winner, Prof. Paul Ehrlich.
He was a devotee of modern art at an early age.
Rolf is survived by his wife of 33 years, Angela Dessauer of Wilmington.
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