Douglas Patrick Harrison

He always had a deep attachment to Texas, and in particular the small town of Frost, where he was born on November 19, 1937. Frost is a no-stoplight town of 600 people 90 minutes south of Dallas, and Doug graduated from high school there having lettered in baseball, football, and basketball. His mother, Lura Wren Harrison, was a school teacher there, and his father, William Vergil Harrison, was superintendent of Navarro County Schools.

Douglas never missed (the very small) high school reunions of fellow Frost Polar Bears.

He attended Navarro Junior College before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his Ph.D. in 1966 in chemical engineering. As a graduate student, he met and married Kay Farquhar Harrison of Dallas. She was teaching at Southwest Texas State University while studying for her PhD in history at the University of California-Berkeley.

Douglas was a loyal Texas Longhorns fan, and in the days before cable television, he and Kay would drive with their family across the border to Beaumont to watch an important football game on television. In later years, he would watch any Longhorn sport that was on TV.

He began his career with Monsanto at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. In 1969 he joined the Chemical Engineering department as an assistant professor. He served as department chair from 1976 to 1979 and held the Alexis and Marguerite Voorhies Endowed Professorship. He is the only professor to have received the Dow Chemical Excellence in Teaching Award four times – in 1988, 1995, 2000 and 2002.

His research focused on gas-separation techniques associated with reducing pollution and on greenhouse gas removal from coal-fired power plants. He supervised dozens of master’s and PhD students who are now working as engineers around the world.

He was a visiting professor of engineering in the early 1980s at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and a visiting scholar at the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation in Cheltenham in 2004.

He retired from LSU in 2005 after 38 years with the university.

In retirement he and his wife Kay traveled around the world. Closer to home, he enjoyed spending time with his two children and grandchildren, who knew him as “Chief.”

He was a fine woodworker who built much of his own furniture. He was also an avid stamp collector.

He is preceded in death by his older sister, Dorothy (Dot) Moore of Maxwell, Texas.

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Kay Farquhar Harrison; two children, Carol Harrison (Thomas Brown) of Columbia, SC and Stephen Harrison (Hannah) of Charlotte, NC; and three grandchildren, Alex Harrison, Kate Harrison and Lily Harrison.

He was also close to his four nieces: Kay Moore, Ann Grant, Jane Moore and Jill Moore. Grant, Jane Moore and Jill Moore.

The family wishes to thank the Caring Companions of St. James Place, especially Javetta Queen, Dietra Warner, and Annette Grimes, for their care in his last weeks.

A memorial service will follow this fall. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be made to the LSU Department of Chemical Engineering, in honor of Doug Harrison’s enduring passion for an and dedication to the department.