Biographical Note

David Richard Forrest was born to two devoted parents and school teachers, Kitty and Barney Forrest, on December 2nd, 1956—his due date. This was probably the last thing he completed on time. He grew up in the small, quiet, and mostly boring town of Collegeville, Pa., which has since succumbed to urban sprawl. A succession of interests such as reading science fiction (Tom Swift books, then Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov), band, chorus, church choirs, chess, archery, cross country, track, and one-on-one basketball helped break the monotony of small town life and general lack of girlfriends. An accomplished apple-polisher, he won the Model Student Award upon graduation from Perkiomen Valley High School in 1974.

In the fall of that year, armed only with a sheet of instructions on how to wash his own clothes, he attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. The reading, singing, and chess interests continued, but nearly two decades of religious upbringing went right down the drain when sleeping in on Sundays turned out to be more fun than going to church. Romance bloomed in 1976 when he met Cathy Gross, a shy but accomplished freshman engineering major. They shared remarkably similar tastes in the nerdish enjoyment of science and math, in music, in a mutual dream to explore the vastness of the cosmos, and in a profound disrelish of nearly all cooked vegetables. David graduated with a B.S. in metallurgical engineering in June 1978, Magna Cum Laude, with honors, with the Charles Duncan Fraser Prize in Metallurgy, and the American Society for Metals Award. Some metallographic moonlighting won him first prize in the Lafayette College metallography contest, and an honorable mention in the International Metallographic Society’s annual contest.

Though tempted by graduate school, David opted for cold hard cash and sold himself to the highest bidder—Republic Steel Corp. in Massillon, Ohio. A year later, in June of 1979, he married Cathy. After spending one too many nights on midnight shift in a hot strip mill in Warren, Ohio, David’s thoughts turned once again to outer space. “Astronauts have more fun than metallurgists,” he reasoned, “so I need to become an astronaut.”

In October of that year he left his position with Republic Steel and joined Bethlehem Steel Corp. (BSC), in Bethlehem, Pa., as did Cathy. There he attended Lehigh University part time for a master’s degree while working full time for BSC—first in the steam and soot of the Bethlehem Plant then in a cushy desk job at Homer Research Laboratories. His principal accomplishments during this time period were: (1) gained new insights into the relationships between processing, microstructure, and the mechanical properties of forgings for nuclear reactor and power generation applications; (2) was the first researcher at Bethlehem to apply regression analysis and linear programming to optimize the composition and processing of these forgings; (3) solved the 20-year problem of sporadic impact properties in nuclear pressure vessel steel; and (4) survived for an entire year on breakfasts of hot chocolate and Lorna Doones. In 1983 he became a registered professional engineer.

In January of 1985, he left Bethlehem to pursue a doctoral degree at MIT, reasoning that (1) he really didn’t know anything about metallurgy and it was about time he learned, (2) some astronauts have PhD’s from MIT, and (3) living a life of near-penniless servitude in a forgotten corner of MIT would be much more fun than making lots of money and taking trips to the Caribbean. (Of course, he only got two out of three right.) Six weeks into the first semester he met Eric Drexler, probably the most modest genius on campus, who convinced him that (a) within the next 25 years we would have a technology capable of lowering earth to orbit transport costs by two or three orders of magnitude (anyone could be an astronaut if they wanted), and (b) this was not very important compared to the other consequences of the technology. As a result of this chance encounter, he began helping Eric to disseminate information about molecular systems engineering by: writing a prizewinning essay for the Honeywell Futurist awards competition; becoming vice-president (then president) of the MIT Nanotechnology Study Group; being quoted in magazines, newspapers, and on National Public Radio; performing a technology assessment of molecular computation for Digital Equipment Corporation; organizing and giving talks and seminars on the subject. In his spare time, he worked on his thesis.

In 1991, with most of the research completed, he moved to Natrona Heights, Pa. with his wife, Cathy, and three year old daughter, Erin, to finish the thesis while working as a Research Specialist for Allegheny Ludlum Steel. There, his research involves the study of temper rolling, surface engineering, and the mathematical modeling of microstructural evolution. Also in 1991, David was one of 88 finalists selected for a week of medical and psychological testing and interviews in NASA’s astronaut candidate program. He is continuing his activities in the nanotechnology arena, most recently having served as a reviewer for the book, Nanotechnology and the Culture of Abundance to be published by MIT Press.

Publications to date:
“The Frontiers of Molecular and Microscale Systems,” JOM, 42 (3), March 1990, p. 33.
“Global Warming and the Primary Metals Industry,” JOM, 43 (12), December 1991, p. 23-30.
“Molecular Machines for Parallel Distributed Materials Processing,” Advanced Materials & Processes, 141 (1), January 1993.

A serious version of this biographical note is also available.