NORWALK

By FRANCIS X. FAY JR.

Hour Senior Writer


He needed a very long runway to get off the ground, but once airborne there was no limit to the distance Frederick G. Yost could fly.

His unusual academic odyssey finally landed him at Sandia National Laboratories where several years of micrometallurgical experimentation led him to the creation of the substitute for lead that is now used in the soldering of silicon connections everywhere.

His lead-free solder alloys have brought him seven U.S. Patents, a fellowship in the American Society for Metals, now ASM international, and the status of Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at the laboratory where 8,000 scientists and engineers maintain the nation's nuclear arsenal.

These attainments will also bring him installation at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 3, to the Norwalk High School "Wall of Honor."

"I'm very excited," he admitted this week from the New Mexico he's known for 37 years. "It's quite an honor."

The patent now being licensed by electronic equipment manufacturing companies around the world is shared by three peers at Iowa State University (ISU) who provided the application aspects to his prototypical solder material. Those licenses have brought $6 million already and the patent has some years to run.

Quite a distance from his Norwalk High School experience with the Class of 1958 where he was a desultory student, and went three more years before re-engaging his brain at Norwalk State Technical Institute after it opened in 1961. In the meantime, he was, his own words "building hot rods, drinking beer and getting into fights."

Shortly after graduating in 1963 with the first NSTI class, he and the former Patricia Kardos of the NHS Class of 1961 married and they had two daughters within a short period. He worked as a draftsman while obtaining a bachelor's degree with honors in metallurgical engineering from Brooklyn Polytechnic University where his papers won two special awards.

During a subsequent year with Pratt & Whitney Aircraft upstate, a superior strongly advised him to continue to graduate school. The superior followed up the advice by arranging with a former colleague at ISU to have Yost admitted to the graduate program.

Five years later, with a materials science doctorate in hand, Yost went to Sandia where representative technical tasks involved failure analysis of electronics packaging, materials compatibility and reliability and identification and modeling of various materials failure processes. He was a member of the technical staff for 13 years before becoming a project leader in 1985 and a senior member in the electronic packaging division two years later. He was selected project leader of the Center for Soldering Science and Technology in 1991.

Yost obtained patents in such arcane subjects as Solderability Test Systems and Extruded Solder Pressure Bonding while editing two books and writing 100 technical papers, three of which won awards in his field.

Fairly dry subject matter. But fortunately for Yost, he has had a parallel interest in art that stems from his late mother's work in ceramics. Influenced by his early drafting work, he first became a calligrapher, then a sculptor and eventually a painter in oil and pastels. He has won awards at the prestigious Santa Fe Art Show and his work has sold for as much as $2,500 and is in collections around the country. He has been especially busy with that aspect of his life since retirement in 1999 from Sandia and even moreso since cutting down his consulting work in 2005.

Yost was raised at 17 Gregory Boulevard the older son of the late Fred and Beverly Dann Yost. His father was associated with the Electric Regulator Company here for some years. His father was also Norwalk fire commissioner in the late 1950s, who with fellow Commissioner Leonard A. Harris, and Mayor Irving C. Freese, selected Sanford Anderson as Norwalk's first black firefighter. Coincidentally, Anderson is being installed on the NHS Wall of Honor the same day.

"Makes it all the better," Yost said.

During his visit East, Yost will be staying with younger brother, Charles Yost, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company agent, who still lives in the family home in Gregory Boulevard.

And after flying off so many years ago, he's returning having found a purpose that has allowed him to make a significant contribution to the world of science.