Platt, who was 96, died Tuesday at his Claremont home after a period of declining health, announced a daughter, Ann Platt Walker.
When Platt stepped down in 1976, Harvey Mudd was considered one of the nation’s top science and engineering colleges, a distinction that remains true today.
We were able to get people of great stature on our faculty, and it took real courage and commitment on their part to come to a place nobody heard of.” Of the private college’s beginnings, Platt told The Times in 1987: “It was by no means clear … that things would fall into place. McKelvey, director of development when the school opened in 1957. His ability to lead by suggestion helped him place the school “on a road to success,” according to George I. Humor was a continual resource for Platt, known for singing silly scientific ditties to teach his students, but so was consensus building.
Platt wrote decades after accepting the challenge in 1956 to become the founding president of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont. Launching a new college would “clearly be a great adventure but so is jumping off a bridge,” physicist Joseph B.
