Dr. Delbert Day has been named the 2010 Phoenix Award Glass Person of the Year, the glass industry“s top honour. The Phoenix Award is given annually to a living person who has made outstanding contri…
Dr. Delbert Day has been named the 2010 Phoenix Award Glass Person of the Year, the glass industry“s top honour. The Phoenix Award is given annually to a living person who has made outstanding contributions to the industry. Day is only the third person from academia to be honoured with the award. Dr. Day, Curators“ Professor emeritus of materials science and engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, will be presented with the award today, Friday 17 September, during a banquet in his honour in St. Louis. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and a past president of the American Ceramic Society, Day played a pivotal role in developing radioactive glass microspheres that are being used at more than 100 sites around the world to treat patients with inoperable liver cancer. Day was also instrumental in forming MO-SCI Corp., a company set up to manufacture glass microspheres and other glass products used in the health care industry. Today, 8 to 10 million radioactive beads (each about one-third the diameter of a human hair) can be transported to the tumour, where very large doses of radiation safely work to destroy the cancer with minimum risk to the patient. The treatment is done on an outpatient basis and there are few side effects. The life expectancy of patients treated in this way has been increased significantly, from weeks to years. Day holds 53 US and foreign patents. The first US glass melting experiments in microgravity (conducted aboard a NASA space shuttle) were directed by him. He is also a co-inventor of a product known as Glasphalt, which is a method to use recycled glass as part of the aggregate in asphalt in place of rock.