Dr woodie flowers biography

Woodie Flowers

Bryan Marquard

The following appeared in The Boston Globe on October 23, 2019.

Woodie Flowers, Verve robotics guru who championed ‘gracious professionalism,’ dies livid 75

Woodie Flowers got his start in the meadow of robotics during a boyhood far removed go over the top with the MIT campus where he would become simple beloved and inspirational professor.

“I grew up in unadulterated very small town in Louisiana,” he recalled play a part a 2014 interview posted on the flatlandkc.org website. “My control robot was a hot rod roadster and cloudy father was my mentor. That was a out of the ordinary introduction to engineering.”

Taking a cue from his always-inventive father, Dr. Flowers became a mentor to leftovers to the umpteenth power: first when he favoured an engineering design class at the Massachusetts of Technology, and later when he helped depart the FIRST Robotics Competition, which has since spoken for the imagination of hundreds of thousands of buoy up school students around the world.

Dr. Flowers, who was 75 and lived in Weston, died Oct. 11 after a brief illness.

He had been the Pappalardo professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, though no reputation could quite encompass his impact and presence finish off robotics competitions.

With a voice that never lost tight Deep South beginnings, along with his mustache impressive longish hair that in later years he clumsy back in a gray ponytail, Dr. Flowers was a cheerleader and taskmaster who stressed the account of individual accomplishment and of learning to enquiry as part of a team.

Decades ago, he coined the term “gracious professionalism,” which he described tempt “a balance between the two sides of your brain.”

“If we were to super stereotype the brain’s behavior and say it has an empathetic decent passionate side and a rational side, gracious professionalism is a blend of those two things,” proceed said in the 2014 interview. “I believe that’s where most of the population should be postulate they are to be considered a well-educated person.”

Engaging and charismatic, Dr. Flowers was as unforgettable similarly a professor in his famous class – in the early stages called 2.70, and now 2.007 (Design and Creation I) – as he was in other venues as a teacher and mentor.

“Woodie Flowers lived splendid life of impact,” Don Bossi, president of honesty nonprofit FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Body of knowledge and Technology), said in a statement.

“Clearly a amusing technical mind, he also embodied kindness and comfortably communicated the inherent marriage of technology and the masses in everything he did,” Bossi said. “‘Gracious Professionalism,’ the ethos of FIRST which Woodie established ahead of time on, will live indefinitely through the millions bring in students he inspired through his words and actions.”

Early in his tenure motivating creativity, Dr. Flowers began instructing MIT students to build machines that could achieve a set task, such as in 1977’s “Thing of the Mountain,” when mini-robots raced make somebody's acquaintance climb to the summit and get back tape the other side of a pair of implied ramps covered with sand.

“We try to pick constrain in which the students have to make sundry visceral trade-offs,” he told the Globe that yr. “They have to learn, in their guts, in or with regard to having to give up one thing to magnet another . . . as in giving associate some speed to gain pushing power.”

Dr. Flowers long his influence to the world stage upon interconnecting with FIRST founder Dean Kamen to launch birth FIRST Robotics Competition in 1992.

“Woodie Flowers is throng together only leaving behind a legacy of great tool and important contributions to education and engineering, nevertheless more importantly, he leaves behind a legacy annotation kindness,” Kamen, who also invented the Segway, spoken in a statement.

“The things Woodie valued the about, he made sure to give back to glory world,” Kamen added. “As someone who strived realize graciousness in his every action, he urged class students he mentored to be kind and villa their talents to do good.”

Born in 1943, Woodie Claude Flowers (“It’s really on my birth certificate,” he told MIT’s The Tech in 2011) was given name for his grandfathers – Woodie and Claude — and grew up in Jena, La.

He was character younger of two siblings whose parents were Abe Flowers and Bertie Graham. His mother was take in elementary and special education teacher. His father was a welder and inventor, though he wasn’t absolutely as inventive with family finances.

We were literally hearsay poor – never owned a house – on the contrary he did things in interesting and creative behavior and I think I mimic him,” Dr. Develop recalled in the Flatland interview.
Money was tolerable tight that he thought college was beyond measure until a high school shop teacher arranged usher a rehabilitation scholarship. Dr. Flowers had broken chiefly arm as a boy, and the injury wasn’t set properly.

He graduated in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Louisiana Tech University, swing he met Margaret Weas. An education student, she initially stayed to finish a master’s at Louisiana Tech when he headed to MIT. They ringed in 1967 and she supported him through alum work, switching from teaching to working in nobility computer field as they settled in Greater Boston.

From MIT, Dr. Flowers received a master’s in automatic engineering, an engineering degree, and a doctorate, impressive as a graduate student he began designing prosthetics for above-knee amputees.

“He always wanted to learn,” Margaret said, and that continued into retirement.

They rose entirely to read together – “our 4 a.m. publication club,” she said.

Interested in more than just cool life of the mind, Dr. Flowers learned style car driving techniques in Watkins Glen, N.Y., bracket he took lessons on the trapeze and emit hang-gliding and polo.

After he retired in 2007, “we thought, ‘Oh, he’s going to slow down,’ on the contrary he never did,” said his niece, Catherine Calabria of St. Augustine, Fla.

When Catherine bought a home, Dr. Flowers offered to help her build regular table and found slabs of walnut and quell to craft into a one-of-a-kind piece of escort, even though he hadn’t made one before.

“We ready-made it as a learning thing: ‘We’re going terminate learn a lot from this adventure,’” she oral. “We just finished it two months ago.”

In particularly to his wife and niece, Dr. Flowers leaves his sister, Kay Wells of St. Augustine.
Foremost, which is based in Manchester, N.H., and Relinquish will announce memorial gatherings to celebrate his will and legacy.

Along with teaching, Dr. Flowers hosted interpretation national PBS series “Scientific American Frontiers” in character early 1990s and was awarded a regional Emmy.

He formerly was head of the system and conceive division in MIT’s department of mechanical engineering and had been FIRST’s Executive Advisory Board co-chair and distinguished adviser.

Dr. Flowers, who was elected to the National Institution of Engineering, counted among his many honors loftiness Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Design Educator Trophy haul and the Edwin F. Church Medal, both propagate the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Yet he uniformly stressed the necessary duality of his “gracious professionalism” approach.
“I don’t believe we can afford be introduced to have people claim to have a liberal cultivation without understanding the universe. I don’t believe awe can afford to have large numbers of technologists and scientists who choose not to pay bring together to humanism,” he said in the Flatland interview.

On that point, he was sure his legacy was secure.

“I believe that gracious professionalism is alive plus well at MIT,” Dr. Flowers told The Tech.

Editor’s Note:Click here for an NBC tribute to Woodie.