Stone Receives Dean's Award from UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Henry Stone of San Jose, Calif., a retired vice president of General Electric Co. who has had an extensive impact on the nation's nuclear energy and electrical power programs, received the Dean's Award at the recent commencement ceremony of the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The Dean's Award, the highest honor awarded by the school, is presented annually to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the practice of engineering or has had an exceptional professional career.

Stone, a loyal UB alumnus since his graduation in 1949, has given the engineering school a gift to benefit an engineering student who is a member of a minority group, or who is an immigrant like himself.

He emigrated with his parents from Germany, working while earning a high school diploma in night school.

Stone joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and served in the South Pacific during World War II.

After the war, he used the GI Bill to enroll in the then-private University of Buffalo, where he received an undergraduate degree summa cum laude in mechanical engineering.

Stone was unable to attend his UB commencement ceremony because he was working at the General Electric facility in Lynn, Mass.

He later was transferred to the GE plant in Schenectady, and in 1950 was assigned to the new GE affiliate, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL) in Niskayuna, where nuclear power plants were designed, built and tested for the U.S. Navy.

Stone earned a graduate degree in engineering from Union College in 1955.

In 1968, he was appointed KAPL general manager and in 1974 was sent to GE's San Jose commercial operation as its engineering manager and later was named a vice president at the facility.

He was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering in 1981, and also is a member of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society, and the American Nuclear Society. He is a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Since his retirement, Stone has been a consultant with the U.S. Department of Energy and various utility companies, working primarily with commercial nuclear power plants.