Don Anthony Wishes

Dear Carolyn and Jack,

Phil Westmoreland passed on the information about Jack’s diagnosis. I was very sorry to hear about it but in reading your web blog, it is apparent that you are handling the situation extremely well. Our prayers are with you both.

By the way, Happy Birthday, Jack. Phil mentioned that this would be number 70.

Darla and I are living in North Venice, Florida, on a golf course with tennis courts just down the street. The beach is 10 minutes away. Given these surroundings, you might surmise that I have retired and that was certainly the plan. However, the doctoral thesis that I did working for Jack intervened and it now looks like retirement is a few years away.

Three years I got a call from three young entrepreneurs who were actually reading my MIT dissertation. They were planning to start a business based on catalytic coal gasification to synthetic natural gas and were looking for advisors who knew something about it. I agreed to give them some free advice based on my technical and business background, fully anticipating when they realized the magnitude of the undertaking that they would give up and do something else. A year later, they secured their first venture capital funding and formally founded a new company called Great Point Energy. I was invited to join their board. This summer after securing a second round of venture capital funds and getting Citibank and Dow Chemical to lead a third round of funding, I agreed to join full time as their chief technology officer. The company has just raised another $100 million and is now proceeding to build a demonstration plant.

Jack, this company and its technology is, in essence, based on the observation that you and Hoyt Hottel made in your 1970 book, New Energy Technology, that the best way to make synthetic natural gas from coal would be to find a catalyst that allowed low temperature operation. By the way, my “dog-eared” copy of your book is still the most useful reference book on the subject.

I do get to Cambridge from time to time and would love to stop by and chat if you are up for it.

Again, our prayers are with you.

Don Anthony

Donald B. Anthony, Sc.D.
Chief Technology Officer
Great Point Energy, Inc.

Cell phone 1: 617-821-1097
Cell phone 2: 216-396-8664
Email: danthony@greatpointenergy.com

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