CLYDE PETER JUPITER (1928-2024)

BY WARREN F. MILLER

We mourn the recent loss of a colleague and friend, CLYDE PETER JUPITER, who passed away on March 31, 2024. Clyde’s positive, can-do attitude was infectious and touched all who he came across. He was best known as a builder of companies, having co-founded two successful nuclear energy private entities, Jupiter Corporation and AZ Isotopes. But his long career included service to the nuclear profession, his family, and his church, as well as to the African American community. His technical and business contributions culminated in the ultimate professional achievement — election by his peers as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in October of 2023. Most importantly, he was a joy to work with and to just be around!

Clyde was born on Oct. 31, 1928, to Clarence Edward and Ella Jupiter. He attended public and parochial schools in New Orleans, graduating from Xavier University in 1948. He was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and was noted as one of the first African Americans to attend the University of Notre Dame in 1949. Highlights of Clyde’s career include being featured on the cover of Ebony Magazine (“Negroes at Notre Dame” issue, February 1950). He was also the subject of a 1979 United Negro College Fund ad with the headline “This Jupiter Is No Myth.”

I met Clyde during the 1975 annual American Nuclear Society (ANS) meeting. It was easy for me to gravitate to him since the society had so few African American members in attendance. He, George Ferguson, director of the Nuclear Engineering Program at Howard University, and I developed a strong friendship that lasted for decades. From the beginning, we recognized the need for diversity in ANS membership and programs. Clyde led the discussion and the formalization of the ANS Nuclear Engineering Education for the Disadvantaged (NEED) program in the early 1980s. It was eventually approved as a standing committee of the ANS. With the help of John Landis (NAE 1981), we convinced the ANS leadership to include a “check-off box” on the ANS dues statement for contributions. Clyde provided leadership to a quickly growing program that provided scholarships, mentoring, and travel support for needy undergraduate students who were interested in the nuclear field. His efforts laid the groundwork that blossomed into the much more diverse nuclear field and ANS membership of today. In my opinion, Clyde can be recognized as one of the co-founders of diversity efforts in the ANS!

Clyde was instrumental in the establishment of the first ANS local section on the continent of Africa. The Republic of Ghana Local Section was formally installed in ceremonies held on April 30, 1980, at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Clyde’s persistent efforts in navigating the ANS processes and facilitating Ghanian government approval were key to this achievement. Although the section has since been disbanded, the precedent has been set, as many African countries pursue advanced reactor technologies for the future.

Clyde had a lifelong love of nuclear physics. His love of radiation detection hardware and applications brought him to various professional settings. These included Douglas Aircraft, U.S. Naval Electronics Laboratory, U.S. Army Chemical Corps Laboratory, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, General Atomics, and EG&G. He participated in and managed teams developing detectors of pulsed neutrons, high-energy gammas, and charged particles for applications that varied from undersea to outer space. Many publications and patents were fruits of his labors, but more importantly, real-world deployment of detector and particle accelerator concepts resulted.

Clyde served for over a decade on the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. His work was largely within the research arm of the commission, serving as a member of research teams as well as manager of various NRC organizations. While serving the federal government, he found time to participate as an active adjunct professor in the Nuclear Engineering Program at Howard University, serving with his dear friend, George Ferguson. He was a devoted Catholic and later joined his wife in membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. His contributions to both were profound and long lasting.

Clyde co-founded two companies after leaving the NRC. He and his wife, Pat, founded Jupiter Corporation in 1986. They were active in building and leading this engineering services company until they retired in 2011, building the company from scratch to a size of well over 125 employees. With mostly federal contracts, the company contributed to nuclear waste management, environmental compliance analysis, and analysis of isotope production facilities, among many others. In 2017 he co-founded AZ Isotopes. This company is presently establishing a complex of facilities in Bunker Hill, Indiana, to produce radioisotopes for nuclear medicine imaging and research using a 70-MeV proton cyclotron along with supporting facilities. The novel design of the cyclotron includes original technical ideas from Clyde. The company has begun isotope production and delivery.

Clyde Jupiter — public servant, scientific and engineering thinker and doer, builder of companies, and dear friend. He is and will continue to be sorely missed.