BALTIMORE -- Joseph McLain, a pyrotechnical inventor, environmentalist and university president, died Sunday at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 65.
McLain held more than 30 patents for inventions such as smoke grenades to camouflage troops, underwater torches used by the Navy and warning flares used by police and motorists on highways throughout the nation.
He also helped develop rocket formulas and was a leader in solving the problem of staged separations of rockets during space flights.
McLain also conducted research on the effects of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and served on the first state task force to study the disappearance of certain bay grasses.
A native of Weirton, W.Va., McLain grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Washington College, a small liberal arts college on Maryland's Eastern Shore, in 1937.
He earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and began his teaching career at Washington in 1946. He became head of the chemistry department in 1955, was voted most popular professor on the campus in 1965 and in 1973 became the 22nd president of the college, located in Chestertown in Kent County.
He wrote three textbooks on pyrotechnics and in 1980 published 'Pyrotechnics from the Viewpoint of Solid State Chemistry.' Pyrotechnics is literally the 'art of fire' and involves the study of explosions and creation of fire.
McLain once wrote that he got his start because of his fascination with a chemistry set he received when he was a boy.
He is survived by his wife, two daughters, a brother and three grandchildren.
