George Leppert
1925-March 9, 2008
Palo Alto, California

George Leppert, a former Stanford University engineering professor, died in his Palo Alto home March 9 after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. He was 83.

He came to Stanford to direct a nuclear technology program in 1954, hired by former engineering dean Fred Terman. He helped bring nuclear power to the Stanford campus, gaining approval from the Atomic Engineering Commission in 1957 to build a 10-kilowatt nuclear research reactor on Stanford Avenue near what is now the site of Nixon Elementary School in Palo Alto. The reactor began operation in 1959 and served as a research facility for engineering students until it was shut down in 1972.

While an advocate of nuclear power, he was opposed to nuclear weapons, said his stepdaughter, Ann Woods, institutional editor at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. He became a peace activist after working with scientists at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.

"I remember him saying that it had been an intellectual experience up to that point, and then he realized that people planned on actually using those things," Wood said.

He was born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1924, the son of union organizers. He served in the U.S. Navy on a submarine in the Pacific during World War II. He graduated in engineering from the Illinois Institute of technology in 1947 and received a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin in 1954 and then moved to Stanford to run the nuclear program.

He became one of the youngest full professors at Stanford in 1960. While at Stanford, he took a leave of absence to run for Congress in 1966 as an opponent of the war in Vietnam. He lost that election but remained active in politics and was the president of the Palo Alto-Stanford Democratic Club in 1967.

He was selected as a Robert Kennedy delegate to the 1968 Democratic Party National Convention before Kennedy was assassinated.

Wood, while watching the convention on TV, was surprised to see her stepfather, "a very dignified, put-together professor type," standing on a chair and yelling "No!" when the convention nominated Hubert Humphrey by acclamation as the presidential candidate.

He later served as dean of engineering at Clarkson College in Potsdam, N.Y., and then worked at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois before returning to the Bay Area to work at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto.

Leppert is survived by his wife of 46 years, Helen Robinson Leppert; Clint Shiells, a son from a previous marriage, and daughter-in-law Svetlana Shiells of Vienna, Austria; Helen's children, Ann Wood of Palo Alto and Ralph Liddle, who resides in the Santa Cruz Mountains; and several grandchildren.

Tags: veteran, teacher/educator