When Clayton Bates talked about growing up in New York, he recalled the clamor of sirens, the aroma of hot dog carts, the dampness of muggy summer days. And he remembered poet Elias Lieberman, the superintendent of Bates’s junior high school, who wrote: “I believe in climbing upward even when the spent and broken thing I call my body cries ‘halt!’ ” The line, from Lieberman’s poem “Credo,” became Bates’s favorite quote.
Photo: Courtesy Bates Family
Clayton Wilson Bates Jr., a professor emeritus of materials science and engineering and of electrical engineering, and the first Black faculty member to earn tenure at the School of Engineering, died on February 18. He was 91.
At age 8, Bates developed a fascination with airplanes and a determination to become an engineer. After graduating from Manhattan College with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, he earned a master’s in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, a master’s in applied physics from Harvard, and a PhD in physics from Washington University in St. Louis.
In 1969, Bates obtained his first patent. The X-ray image intensifier tube he designed became standard equipment in diagnostic radiology at hospitals around the world. He came to Stanford in 1972, having been recruited by engineering professors Arthur Bienenstock and Bill Spicer. An expert in solid-state physics, Bates worked to unravel the processes involved in the interaction of photons and electrons with the materials used in photoelectronic sensing devices.
In 1973, Bates co-founded the Stanford Society of Black Scientists and Engineers, which facilitated “an increase in Black participation in science and engineering” at the university, says Bienenstock, Stanford’s first faculty affirmative action officer and now a professor emeritus of photon science. In 1994, having retired from Stanford, Bates joined the faculty of Howard University, where he established an interdisciplinary graduate program in materials science and engineering. He was later named associate dean for graduate education and research.
Students remember him as a dedicated adviser and mentor. “I’m not sure I would have stayed at Stanford if it hadn’t been for Clay,” says Cammy Abernathy, MS ’82, PhD ’85, one of the few women in her graduate program and the first woman to be named dean of the University of Florida’s school of engineering. “From the very beginning, he treated you almost like a colleague,” she says. “He respected your input. He requested your input.”
After hours, Bates would often design and build model airplanes in his workshop at home. “We’d go over to one of the fields at Stanford, like Churchill and El Camino, and we would fly the planes over there,” says his son, Chris.
Bates was predeceased by his wife, Priscilla. In addition to his son, he is survived by his daughters, Naomi Haines and Katherine, and a grandson.
Kali Shiloh is a staff writer at Stanford. Email her at kshiloh@stanford.edu.
