LUBBOCK, Texas, June 5 (UPI) -- Ole Kleppa, who hiked out of Nazi-occupied Norway as a young man and became an expert in space-age metals in Chicago, has died in Texas.
Kleppa, who retired from the University of Chicago in 1990 after a 40-year career in the chemistry department there, died May 27 at the University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas, at age 87, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
Kleppa's work involved the effect that high temperature has on metal an other materials and is widely used in aviation, nuclear physics and other fields. Scientists and researchers still use the "Kleppa calorimeter," which measures how much energy is needed to make compounds and alloys, the University of Chicago's Susan Meschel told the Sun-Times.
Kleppa's daughter told the newspaper that he "escaped over the mountains to Sweden" during World War II while pretending to pick berries. He learned later that the Gestapo had been looking for him.
