Stuart J. Allen
A life and engineering retrospective, Aug. 13, 1935 — Jul. 15, 2017.

STUART JOSEPH ALLEN was an unassuming person. He had the gift of an intuitive mathematical mind, something quite rare. For three decades, I worked with Stu. We published much, and much is still unpublished.
Stu was born and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. His father was of U.K. ancestry and ran a retail store in the city. Allen is one of the oldest surnames in the old country. Stu was proud of his Celtic and Scottish heritage. His mother (nee LaTendre) was descendent from the Arcadian French. Her distant family was in N. America dating from the 1600s. They made a push into Wisconsin from Canada while a separate group split off to travel South along the Mississippi River and to set up New Orleans. Stu was equally proud of these rugged ancestors.
As a boy, he visited farms with his grandfather who sold and fixed windmills for pumping water on the Great Plains. During WWII, he recalled that many families in Eau Claire worked together to raise horticultural crops as part of the war effort. He liked skiing and once went in Wisconsin when it was near -40F.
Stu was a graduate from Regis High School class of 1953. The yearbook had Chi Rho as its symbol. He played sports including being an end on the football team. In the fourth grade at Catholic school, he recalled becoming interested in math via a singular event. While at the blackboard for classwork he was not concentrating. The nun noticed and severely reprimanded him. From then forward, he concentrated while doing math. In high school, his favorite musical performer was Teresa Brewer. Marlon Brando was the pick as top actor in “On the Waterfront.” At the bottom, Montgomery Clift — overrated.
After Regis, Stu attended University of St. Thomas in Minnesota for two years focusing on electrical engineering. He then transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, majoring in mechanical engineering. In the 1950s, before Sputnik and the transformation of American scientific education, the MechE curriculum focused on many practical aspects such as welding and metal bending. It was a hands-on program. For engineering calculations, Stu carried a 2-foot-long wooden slide rule via a sheath attached to his belt. It was good to three significant figures, enough in later times to design the space shuttle. He remarked that during examinations the students would move the slider quickly, joking that “there was smoke.” A large room for an engineering exam was a spectacle.
Upon graduation from Wisconsin in 1958, Stu took a job at Boeing in Seattle and drove cross- country in an oil-burning 1948 manual transmission Chevy, just making it across the Cascades. He and his wife had an apartment in Queen Ann Hill with a view of Mt. Rainier, and he rapidly became enmeshed with the engineering and scientific culture of Boeing. His first project was to design a bracket that served as a mount for a piece of equipment. In reminiscing, Stu recounted that he far over designed it, by a factor of 10, “to make 100% sure it did not fail.”
During his five-year time at Boeing, he worked on defense and space flight systems including; the Bomarc surface-to-air missile, the nose cone (warhead) re-entry problem (ablation), and the Saturn V booster that propelled Apollo to the moon. Much of this work was sensitive. Stu would only say, “loose lips sink ships.”
For the warhead project, he “used a big glob of copper at the nose cone base as the heat sink.” The Saturn booster problem involved jet plume studies, which he modeled using equations to form an analytical solution. The diameter of the plume was unknown as the booster rose through the atmosphere and experienced lower air pressure. The possibility existed of burning out the control surfaces as the plume expanded with altitude. The engines underwent testing in a large vacuum chamber in the Yakima valley. He made trips there. A 90-foot-high steam column gave the vacuum. As part of the engineering team he received a scale model of the booster.
While at Boeing he earned a master of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Seattle University run by the Jesuits. He also was among the first to see a Ravi Shankar performance in the United States during a visit to New York City.
In 1962, he began the Ph.D. program in engineering mechanics at the University of Minnesota as a NASA Fellow. The launching of the American space program prompted a huge need for mathematicians and engineers. In the 1960s it was unusual for a person from industry to enter Ph.D level study. Early in the program, Stu passed the written foreign language translation test in German, something he never studied, saying “I used a dictionary and I figured it out.” He loved written exams. The more complex the better. He hated oral exams. Before such a test, he liked to walk in the library sometimes for an hour.
Describing the first semester, Stu said it was “like male peacocks displaying their colorful feathers and strutting around.” His specialty was fluid mechanics and he published his thesis in the J. of Fluid Mechanics, top in the field. While a graduate student, Stu worked for Rosemont Manufacturing designing pitot tubes to measure airspeed to earn extra money. Overall, he mentioned that the attitude at Minnesota was that “engineering mechanics … they thought it explained everything.”
In the 1960s the place to be was Detroit. The automobile industry was booming. There was constant need for advances in technology, especially biomedical engineering. Stu became an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Wayne State University. He made tenure in four years by focusing on non-Newtonian fluid mechanics and rigorous mathematics. This involved analyzing the motion of particles in a fluid and tenser analysis. Stu later conducted early work in blood flow and the shear and deformation of blood cells.
He rose to department head; and, while keeping his academic and administrative duties, spent one year in law school. Given his leadership position, people from the Detroit area often sought him out with inventions, including many perpetual motion machines. In one case, a man said he had done this via a “rock mill.” Stu asked for more detail and the man replied, “You have heard of a water mill? This uses rocks …”
Around this time, Stu saw a lecture by the anthropologist Margret Mead. He said that for the talk “she wore a Muumuu,” like a Samoan.
For the first sabbatical, Stu moved his family to Mountain View for a year and studied decision analysis and stochastic processes with Ronald A. Howard at Stanford. He bought a 250 cc Kawasaki to get to campus. For the era of the 1950s and 1960s, all of engineering was deterministic. This was especially true for MechE. Stanford offered a new look at the world of statistics and random processes. It was during this time that he began to think about switching to business. The costs were far higher for making a bad decision. Any yet, business decisions were never deterministic like much of engineering. There was always probability and risk, and the opportunity to improve.
Shortly thereafter, he became a professor of business administration and department head at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, his hometown. He shifted away from the area of advanced fluid mechanics saying that “For too long I thought I was a scientist.” His heart was in engineering. He wanted to see practical applications of value. In addition, during this time he co-owned with family two restaurants in Eau Claire and Menomonie, WI. These were unique in that the architecture was from sketches Stu did of San Francisco storefronts when he was at Stanford. He brought a bit of S.F. to a city block in Eau Claire. The interior featured local artifacts including some parts of decommissioned Catholic churches (wooden pews). It gave a unique effect as did the menu and the drinks, some dishes from colonial America. A punch recipe from Ben Franklin was popular. His sons worked there.

With an interest in living in Europe, Stu took a leave for a short-term job with Boston University as a professor. The appointment was in Germany and he taught statistics to U.S. military officers stationed at USAF and Army bases, and he traveled. In one case, he drove his Yugo along the road to the American controlled sector of Berlin and through E. German checkpoints controlled by the Stasi. This was during the peak of the cold war in the 1980s. He remarked, “with a stern look the East German guards and police would point to my shirt pocket and wanted to trade for American cigarettes. I just gave them the pack.”
Returning to the U.S., Stu accepted a position at the State University of New York at Fredonia as a professor of business administration. He published on the properties of principle component extraction with a colleague. This related to survey work and marketing. At the same time, he started a picture framing shop with a family member in Bemus Point, NY. It was well known in the area.
Later, an opening came up at Penn State — Behrend and Stu took the position. It was during this time that I met Stu through my volunteer job as executive vice president Erie APICS Chapter. For a third time in his career, he made tenure. This must be a record in academics.
He spent his sabbatical at Welch’s in Westfield, NY where I worked in the logistics (later supply chain) department as a manager and did analysis. Starting from then we joint published at least 82 academic papers, articles, and presentations, and a book on Global RFID by Springer. When asked what project he wanted to do, Stu said, “I want to build a math model for the supply chain, beginning to end.” We did that goal. The math was superb. We both learned a great deal.
After Stu’s sabbatical, I received a transfer to Welch’s office in Concord, MA. From then forward our work was by phone and email with a few visits. We were in constant contact. I wish there could have been more visits, especially post 2003.
We focused on capacitated scheduling systems for make-to-stock situations, harvest risk, the supply chain, and of course the M Language. We made lasting contributions in all. This work will carry on and unfold into new directions at MIT and elsewhere.
In 2001, Stu became emeritus at Penn State and in 2003 he moved to Eau Claire, buying a small home. A few years later, he moved to Sioux Falls, SD. He told me that he “always wanted to live in a river town.” Sioux Falls was a nice place. I visited him there. In 2007, he moved to Marysville, Washington to live with his son and daughter-in-law and their family.
Besides engineering, Stu had a deep interest in reading. This took form via a wide range of books from E. O. Wilson to Anthony de Jasay. Patrick O’Brian novels captured his imagination. The series of 20 features the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars and the friendship between Captain Aubrey and the ship physician Steven Maturin, the central characters. Histories of all types, the work of Indian novelist Vikram Seth, and the stalwart Friedrich August von Hayek were favorites as were all manner of books dealing with Classical Liberalism. Each year Stu and I exchanged books at Christmas. A desired bookseller was the Liberty Fund of Carmel, IN.
On a personal note, Stu had 500 hrs. flight time as a pilot in a Cessna. Later, when in Bemus Point, he and his son enjoyed local flights as Cessna passengers. Always interested in travel, a proud moment for him was playing a round of 18 holes of golf at Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland with his son. Second; seeing Luxor, and the immense columns.
A man of great efficiency, Stu seldom repeated or did things twice. Folks had to listen closely to every word. His exams in statistics were legendary in complexity. He always gave concise explanations. One time I asked him about the excessive shaking of the space shuttle engine nozzles at liftoff. He simply replied, “it’s a bell,” denoting volumes of related engineering research on vibration.
Upon seeing in 2009 the 787 Dreamliner in a hangar at Boeing where his son works, Stu commented, “It looks like a big sausage. I hope they did good wind tunnel experiments.”
One time our conversation turned to thermal problems and entropy. He repeated the word “entropy” once, and then chuckled a bit and said nothing more.
I estimate that he used .4 million sheets, or more, of paper in his lifetime. Stu was fond of writing things out in long-hand.
He had five sons from two marriages. From the fist, all four are left-handed. There are grandkids, nieces, and nephews. His younger brother, Woodrow, passed away several years ago. All, including many colleagues, will miss him. Stu was a remarkable man and a mentor, colleague, and close friend to me. May he rest in peace.
written by,
Edmund W. Schuster
FABRIC FOR DISPERSED KNOWLEDGE — To see my blog posts mentioning Stu please click on the following link:
AggregationZY — Stuart J. Allen
For more information please click on the link below. Stuart is pictured on the left with his brother Woodrow.
Allen, S., 2017. Obituary. Eau Claire, WI: Leader-Telegram, Jul. 22.
Stu’s doctorial thesis publication:
