Arthur G. Hansen Visual Materials

Arthur Gene Hansen (known as "Art") was born on February 28, 1925 in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. After his graduation as valedictorian from his high school in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he joined the United States Marine Corps Reserves. As part of his training for the Marines, Hansen was sent to West Lafayette, Indiana to participate in the Navy V-12 program at Purdue University. After completing his training there, he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1946. He also became a member of the Fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta during his undergraduate years. Two years later, Hansen earned a Master of Science degree in Mathematics, also from Purdue.

In 1948, Hansen became a research scientist for the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (now known as the NASA Glenn Research Center), in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked there for eleven years. During his time at the Lewis Lab, he also worked on his Ph.D., receiving his doctoral degree in Mathematics from Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University), also in Cleveland. He then served as the head of the Nucleonics Research Division at the Cornell University Aeronautics Laboratory in Buffalo, New York.

Hansen was hired by the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he became a professor of Mechanical Engineering, and later, Chairman of that department. In 1965, he served as a visiting scholar at the Tuskegee Institute (now University) in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Hansen joined the Georgia Institute of Technology faculty in 1966, when he was hired as the Dean of the College of Engineering. As Dean, Hansen urged the faculty to implement a core curriculum common to all engineering majors, as well as a reduction of hours required to graduate and a more flexible curriculum, allowing students to have a more well-rounded education. According to Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech, 1885-1985, "the new core curriculum encouraged, but did not mandate, the study of technology as a historical-cultural subject and of the interaction between science and society."

In 1969, after the president of the Institute, Edwin Harrison, abruptly retired, Hansen was named as his replacement. During his time as president of Georgia Tech, "the affable, pipe-smoking Hansen was readily accessible to students (more so than to faculty, some complained) and shared with many of the student leaders a concern about contemporary social problems" (Engineering the New South, p. 379). He was also instrumental in instituting many administrative changes, consolidating many offices of the Institute and abolishing others, as well as expanding campus, purchasing land to the north and west of its original location.

Hansen only served as president of Georgia Tech for two years, for in 1971, he was named president of his alma mater. Hansen became the first Purdue alumnus to serve as president, and he held that position until 1982, when he left to become chancellor of the nine-institution Texas A&M University System, headquartered in College Station, Texas. He was chancellor for four years before retiring in 1986.

Hansen briefly served as the Director of Research for the Hudson Institute, a conservative political think-tank in Washington, DC, but soon retired from academia altogether, moving with his wife, Nancy Tucker Hansen, to Zionsville, Indiana. After her death in 2003, he moved to Fort Myers, Florida, where he married Marilyn White Hansen.

Dr. Arthur G. Hansen died on July 5, 2010, at the age of 85, at the HealthPark Medical Center in Fort Myers. He was survived by his wife, five children (Geoffrey, James, Paul, Ruth, and Christine), two stepchildren (Polly and James), and five grandchildren.

The Arthur G. Hansen Life Science Research Building on the Purdue University campus is named in his honor.