Robert Wellesley Mann died June 1, 2006. Graveside services will be 4:00 PM Thursday at Memory Hill Cemetery with Father Michael McWhorter officiating.
Robert Wellesley Mann, of Lexington, Massachusetts, was a pioneer in engineering design and education, and in rehabilitation and biomedical research. His research achievements were recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, one of only seven individuals so recognized. He supervised more than 300 M.I.T. theses, many of whose recipients now serve as senior faculty at institutions around the world.
A Brooklyn, New York native, Mann was proud of his education at Brooklyn Technical vocational high school. He was employed as a draftsman at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City before and after World War II military service where he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the Southwest Pacific theatre. He entered M.I.T. as a freshman on the G.I. Bill in February of 1947. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1950, his Master's in 1951 and his Doctor of Science in 1957. He joined the M.I.T. Mechanical Engineering faculty in 1953, became full professor in 1963, was appointed Germeshausen Professor in 1970 and then Whitaker Professor of Biomedical Engineering in 1974, an endowed chair he occupied until July 1992. He became Whitaker Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, following his 41 years at M.I.T.
As an educator, Professor Mann transformed the design curriculum in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. in the 1960s by displacing traditional machine element subjects and machinery laboratories with project oriented approaches that involved his students in the entire design process from specification and conception through modeling and analysis, representation, fabrication and test. His approach was formalized at M.I.T. in the 1970s as the "Course 2.70 Design Contest", decades later by numerous national design contests now run at the secondary school level.
As chair of the Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design of the National Commission on Engineering Education he organized four national conferences on engineering design education. His research was largely realized through his supervision of M.I.T. undergraduate and graduate student projects, including 155 bachelors, 104 masters and 52 doctors theses, with many of the latter authors now serving as engineering faculty, and many others in industry. He is the author and co-author of over 400 publications, and named inventor on four patents.
Mann's penchant for innovation evolved along diverse paths that evidenced a convergence of engineering, design, research and ultimately medicine. At M.I.T. through the 1950's, he conducted research and development of air-to-air missile components with an emphasis on internal power systems, including the solid propellant, turbo alternator power supplies for Sparrow I and III, subsequently applied in the Hawk ground-to-air missile. During the same period, he followed early digital computer and graphics display research at M.I.T. and combined his draftsman and design experiences with this computer awareness by inaugurating the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) project at M.I.T. in the late 1950s.
By the 1960s, his research evolved to focus on technology to ameliorate human disabilities resulting from physical handicaps. Mann organized and led a group that addressed the communication, mobility, recreational, and vocational needs of blind persons. Outcomes included English-to-Braille computer translation and production systems and electronic mobility aids for blind travelers. His rehabilitation research then expanded to embrace the musculoskeletal system with the demonstration that brain signals could control a prosthesis replacing an amputated limb, the "Boston" arm. His recent studies of skeletal joints and osteoarthritis, together with related computer-aided surgery, explicated the biomechanical role of cartilage and include the only measurements of pressures on and in cartilage in vivo in the human hip.
Mann founded in 1975 the Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation which he directed, along with the Harvard-MIT Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, until he assumed emeritus status in 1992.
Dr. Mann's work in design and rehabilitation was recognized nationally and international1y, having served on the Ordinance Advisory Committee of the National Security Industrial Association and was chairman of the Department of Defense Advisory Group on Missile Auxiliary Power Systems. He was a member of the National Commission on Engineering Education and founder and chairman of its Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design. He served on the Committee for the Application of Computer-Aided Design of the American Ordnance Association.
As his research shifted to biomedical and rehabilitation engineering he joined the Advisory Committee of the National Braille Authority. In the National Research Council he was a member of the Committees on the Skeletal System and Prosthetics Research and Development and founder and chair of the latter's Subcommittee on Sensory Aids. He served on the NRC Committee on the National Needs for the Rehabilitation of the Physically Handicapped, on its Commissions on Life Sciences and on Strategic Technology for the Army, and its Committee on Space Biology and Medicine. In the Institute of Medicine Dr. Mann was on the Board on Health Sciences Policy and he co-chaired the study "New Medical Devices - Invention, Development and Use" published by the NAE/IOM. He served on the Scientific Review Board in the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served on the board or served as associate editor of engineering and biomedical engineering journals.
Dr. Mann served as Director and President of the Carroll Center for the Blind, Trustee and President of the National Braille Press, and as Consultant on Engineering Science at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He also served on the Board of Overseers of Youville Lifecare, and on the Corporations of the Mount Auburn Hospital and the Perkins School for the Blind.
With his wife, Margaret's passing in 2002, Professor Mann assumed her role in the charitable trust and foundation of her cousin, Flannery O'Connor, internationally renowned for her short stories, novels and letters. Professor Mann served as Co-Trustee of Mary Flannery O'Connor Charitable Trust and as Chairman of the Flannery O'Connor - Andalusia Foundation, Inc.
Professor Mann's contributions were acknowledged by M.I.T. through the award of two endowed chairs and his designation as the James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Awardee in 1983-84, established to "recognize extraordinary professional accomplishments of full-time members of the M.I.T. faculty." That same year, Mann also served as President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of M.I.T., only the second faculty member to so serve this century. In 1995, M.I.T. named him as the inaugural recipient of their Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award.
He was elected a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Fel1ow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Founding Fellow of the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering. He received the Gold Medal of the ASME and the Goldenson Award for Outstanding Scientific Research in Technology for Cerebral Palsy and the Physically Handicapped, was the inaugural recipient of the ASME H.R. Lissner Award in Biomedical Engineering, and was honored by many other awards and recognitions.
While an M.I.T. undergraduate, Professor Mann met Margaret Ida Florencourt, who then was a Research Engineer at M.I.T. on Whirlwind, an early digital computer; they were married in September 1950. Their son, Robert W. Jr., M.I.T. S.B.'75, S.M.'77, has been a senior executive of several national and international airlines and now conducts his own airline industry analysis and consulting business in Port Washington, NY; he and his wife Susan have two sons and a daughter. Professor and Mrs. Mann's daughter, Dr. Catherine L. Mann, Radcliffe/Harvard A.B.'77, M.I.T. Ph.D.'84, served in policy advisory positions in Washington at the Federal Reserve Board and Institute for International Economics and is now a Professor of International Economics and Finance at Brandeis University she and her husband Randy Hartnett of Great Falls, VA.
Mr. Mann was a devoted brother of Virginia Swartz of Pittsburg, PA, Helene Madigan of St. Paul, MN, Kenneth Mann of Burlington, VT, and the late Arthur Mann and Dorothy LeViness. He was delighted by his four grandchildren: Nicholas. Harry and Olivia Mann and Bennett Hartnett. Funeral was held from the Douglass Funeral Home, Lexington VA, Wednesday, June 21, 2006, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Brigid’s Church.
Robert Wellesley Mann, of Lexington, Massachusetts, was a pioneer in engineering design and education, and in rehabilitation and biomedical research. His research achievements were recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, one of only seven individuals so recognized. He supervised more than 300 M.I.T. theses, many of whose recipients now serve as senior faculty at institutions around the world.
A Brooklyn, New York native, Mann was proud of his education at Brooklyn Technical vocational high school. He was employed as a draftsman at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City before and after World War II military service where he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the Southwest Pacific theatre. He entered M.I.T. as a freshman on the G.I. Bill in February of 1947. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1950, his Master's in 1951 and his Doctor of Science in 1957. He joined the M.I.T. Mechanical Engineering faculty in 1953, became full professor in 1963, was appointed Germeshausen Professor in 1970 and then Whitaker Professor of Biomedical Engineering in 1974, an endowed chair he occupied until July 1992. He became Whitaker Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, following his 41 years at M.I.T.
As an educator, Professor Mann transformed the design curriculum in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. in the 1960s by displacing traditional machine element subjects and machinery laboratories with project oriented approaches that involved his students in the entire design process from specification and conception through modeling and analysis, representation, fabrication and test. His approach was formalized at M.I.T. in the 1970s as the "Course 2.70 Design Contest", decades later by numerous national design contests now run at the secondary school level.
As chair of the Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design of the National Commission on Engineering Education he organized four national conferences on engineering design education. His research was largely realized through his supervision of M.I.T. undergraduate and graduate student projects, including 155 bachelors, 104 masters and 52 doctors theses, with many of the latter authors now serving as engineering faculty, and many others in industry. He is the author and co-author of over 400 publications, and named inventor on four patents.
Mann's penchant for innovation evolved along diverse paths that evidenced a convergence of engineering, design, research and ultimately medicine. At M.I.T. through the 1950's, he conducted research and development of air-to-air missile components with an emphasis on internal power systems, including the solid propellant, turbo alternator power supplies for Sparrow I and III, subsequently applied in the Hawk ground-to-air missile. During the same period, he followed early digital computer and graphics display research at M.I.T. and combined his draftsman and design experiences with this computer awareness by inaugurating the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) project at M.I.T. in the late 1950s.
By the 1960s, his research evolved to focus on technology to ameliorate human disabilities resulting from physical handicaps. Mann organized and led a group that addressed the communication, mobility, recreational, and vocational needs of blind persons. Outcomes included English-to-Braille computer translation and production systems and electronic mobility aids for blind travelers. His rehabilitation research then expanded to embrace the musculoskeletal system with the demonstration that brain signals could control a prosthesis replacing an amputated limb, the "Boston" arm. His recent studies of skeletal joints and osteoarthritis, together with related computer-aided surgery, explicated the biomechanical role of cartilage and include the only measurements of pressures on and in cartilage in vivo in the human hip.
Mann founded in 1975 the Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation which he directed, along with the Harvard-MIT Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, until he assumed emeritus status in 1992.
Dr. Mann's work in design and rehabilitation was recognized nationally and international1y, having served on the Ordinance Advisory Committee of the National Security Industrial Association and was chairman of the Department of Defense Advisory Group on Missile Auxiliary Power Systems. He was a member of the National Commission on Engineering Education and founder and chairman of its Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design. He served on the Committee for the Application of Computer-Aided Design of the American Ordnance Association.
As his research shifted to biomedical and rehabilitation engineering he joined the Advisory Committee of the National Braille Authority. In the National Research Council he was a member of the Committees on the Skeletal System and Prosthetics Research and Development and founder and chair of the latter's Subcommittee on Sensory Aids. He served on the NRC Committee on the National Needs for the Rehabilitation of the Physically Handicapped, on its Commissions on Life Sciences and on Strategic Technology for the Army, and its Committee on Space Biology and Medicine. In the Institute of Medicine Dr. Mann was on the Board on Health Sciences Policy and he co-chaired the study "New Medical Devices - Invention, Development and Use" published by the NAE/IOM. He served on the Scientific Review Board in the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served on the board or served as associate editor of engineering and biomedical engineering journals.
Dr. Mann served as Director and President of the Carroll Center for the Blind, Trustee and President of the National Braille Press, and as Consultant on Engineering Science at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He also served on the Board of Overseers of Youville Lifecare, and on the Corporations of the Mount Auburn Hospital and the Perkins School for the Blind.
With his wife, Margaret's passing in 2002, Professor Mann assumed her role in the charitable trust and foundation of her cousin, Flannery O'Connor, internationally renowned for her short stories, novels and letters. Professor Mann served as Co-Trustee of Mary Flannery O'Connor Charitable Trust and as Chairman of the Flannery O'Connor - Andalusia Foundation, Inc.
Professor Mann's contributions were acknowledged by M.I.T. through the award of two endowed chairs and his designation as the James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Awardee in 1983-84, established to "recognize extraordinary professional accomplishments of full-time members of the M.I.T. faculty." That same year, Mann also served as President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of M.I.T., only the second faculty member to so serve this century. In 1995, M.I.T. named him as the inaugural recipient of their Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award.
He was elected a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Fel1ow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Founding Fellow of the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering. He received the Gold Medal of the ASME and the Goldenson Award for Outstanding Scientific Research in Technology for Cerebral Palsy and the Physically Handicapped, was the inaugural recipient of the ASME H.R. Lissner Award in Biomedical Engineering, and was honored by many other awards and recognitions.
While an M.I.T. undergraduate, Professor Mann met Margaret Ida Florencourt, who then was a Research Engineer at M.I.T. on Whirlwind, an early digital computer; they were married in September 1950. Their son, Robert W. Jr., M.I.T. S.B.'75, S.M.'77, has been a senior executive of several national and international airlines and now conducts his own airline industry analysis and consulting business in Port Washington, NY; he and his wife Susan have two sons and a daughter. Professor and Mrs. Mann's daughter, Dr. Catherine L. Mann, Radcliffe/Harvard A.B.'77, M.I.T. Ph.D.'84, served in policy advisory positions in Washington at the Federal Reserve Board and Institute for International Economics and is now a Professor of International Economics and Finance at Brandeis University she and her husband Randy Hartnett of Great Falls, VA.
Mr. Mann was a devoted brother of Virginia Swartz of Pittsburg, PA, Helene Madigan of St. Paul, MN, Kenneth Mann of Burlington, VT, and the late Arthur Mann and Dorothy LeViness. He was delighted by his four grandchildren: Nicholas. Harry and Olivia Mann and Bennett Hartnett. Funeral was held from the Douglass Funeral Home, Lexington VA, Wednesday, June 21, 2006, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Brigid’s Church.
Robert Wellesley Mann died June 1, 2006. Graveside services will be 4:00 PM Thursday at Memory Hill Cemetery with Father Michael McWhorter officiating.
Robert Wellesley Mann, of Lexington, Massachusetts, was a pioneer in engineering design and education, and in rehabilitation and biomedical research. His research achievements were recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, one of only seven individuals so recognized. He supervised more than 300 M.I.T. theses, many of whose recipients now serve as senior faculty at institutions around the world.
A Brooklyn, New York native, Mann was proud of his education at Brooklyn Technical vocational high school. He was employed as a draftsman at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City before and after World War II military service where he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the Southwest Pacific theatre. He entered M.I.T. as a freshman on the G.I. Bill in February of 1947. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1950, his Master's in 1951 and his Doctor of Science in 1957. He joined the M.I.T. Mechanical Engineering faculty in 1953, became full professor in 1963, was appointed Germeshausen Professor in 1970 and then Whitaker Professor of Biomedical Engineering in 1974, an endowed chair he occupied until July 1992. He became Whitaker Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, following his 41 years at M.I.T.
As an educator, Professor Mann transformed the design curriculum in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. in the 1960s by displacing traditional machine element subjects and machinery laboratories with project oriented approaches that involved his students in the entire design process from specification and conception through modeling and analysis, representation, fabrication and test. His approach was formalized at M.I.T. in the 1970s as the "Course 2.70 Design Contest", decades later by numerous national design contests now run at the secondary school level.
As chair of the Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design of the National Commission on Engineering Education he organized four national conferences on engineering design education. His research was largely realized through his supervision of M.I.T. undergraduate and graduate student projects, including 155 bachelors, 104 masters and 52 doctors theses, with many of the latter authors now serving as engineering faculty, and many others in industry. He is the author and co-author of over 400 publications, and named inventor on four patents.
Mann's penchant for innovation evolved along diverse paths that evidenced a convergence of engineering, design, research and ultimately medicine. At M.I.T. through the 1950's, he conducted research and development of air-to-air missile components with an emphasis on internal power systems, including the solid propellant, turbo alternator power supplies for Sparrow I and III, subsequently applied in the Hawk ground-to-air missile. During the same period, he followed early digital computer and graphics display research at M.I.T. and combined his draftsman and design experiences with this computer awareness by inaugurating the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) project at M.I.T. in the late 1950s.
By the 1960s, his research evolved to focus on technology to ameliorate human disabilities resulting from physical handicaps. Mann organized and led a group that addressed the communication, mobility, recreational, and vocational needs of blind persons. Outcomes included English-to-Braille computer translation and production systems and electronic mobility aids for blind travelers. His rehabilitation research then expanded to embrace the musculoskeletal system with the demonstration that brain signals could control a prosthesis replacing an amputated limb, the "Boston" arm. His recent studies of skeletal joints and osteoarthritis, together with related computer-aided surgery, explicated the biomechanical role of cartilage and include the only measurements of pressures on and in cartilage in vivo in the human hip.
Mann founded in 1975 the Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation which he directed, along with the Harvard-MIT Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, until he assumed emeritus status in 1992.
Dr. Mann's work in design and rehabilitation was recognized nationally and international1y, having served on the Ordinance Advisory Committee of the National Security Industrial Association and was chairman of the Department of Defense Advisory Group on Missile Auxiliary Power Systems. He was a member of the National Commission on Engineering Education and founder and chairman of its Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design. He served on the Committee for the Application of Computer-Aided Design of the American Ordnance Association.
As his research shifted to biomedical and rehabilitation engineering he joined the Advisory Committee of the National Braille Authority. In the National Research Council he was a member of the Committees on the Skeletal System and Prosthetics Research and Development and founder and chair of the latter's Subcommittee on Sensory Aids. He served on the NRC Committee on the National Needs for the Rehabilitation of the Physically Handicapped, on its Commissions on Life Sciences and on Strategic Technology for the Army, and its Committee on Space Biology and Medicine. In the Institute of Medicine Dr. Mann was on the Board on Health Sciences Policy and he co-chaired the study "New Medical Devices - Invention, Development and Use" published by the NAE/IOM. He served on the Scientific Review Board in the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served on the board or served as associate editor of engineering and biomedical engineering journals.
Dr. Mann served as Director and President of the Carroll Center for the Blind, Trustee and President of the National Braille Press, and as Consultant on Engineering Science at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He also served on the Board of Overseers of Youville Lifecare, and on the Corporations of the Mount Auburn Hospital and the Perkins School for the Blind.
With his wife, Margaret's passing in 2002, Professor Mann assumed her role in the charitable trust and foundation of her cousin, Flannery O'Connor, internationally renowned for her short stories, novels and letters. Professor Mann served as Co-Trustee of Mary Flannery O'Connor Charitable Trust and as Chairman of the Flannery O'Connor - Andalusia Foundation, Inc.
Professor Mann's contributions were acknowledged by M.I.T. through the award of two endowed chairs and his designation as the James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Awardee in 1983-84, established to "recognize extraordinary professional accomplishments of full-time members of the M.I.T. faculty." That same year, Mann also served as President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of M.I.T., only the second faculty member to so serve this century. In 1995, M.I.T. named him as the inaugural recipient of their Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award.
He was elected a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Fel1ow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Founding Fellow of the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering. He received the Gold Medal of the ASME and the Goldenson Award for Outstanding Scientific Research in Technology for Cerebral Palsy and the Physically Handicapped, was the inaugural recipient of the ASME H.R. Lissner Award in Biomedical Engineering, and was honored by many other awards and recognitions.
While an M.I.T. undergraduate, Professor Mann met Margaret Ida Florencourt, who then was a Research Engineer at M.I.T. on Whirlwind, an early digital computer; they were married in September 1950. Their son, Robert W. Jr., M.I.T. S.B.'75, S.M.'77, has been a senior executive of several national and international airlines and now conducts his own airline industry analysis and consulting business in Port Washington, NY; he and his wife Susan have two sons and a daughter. Professor and Mrs. Mann's daughter, Dr. Catherine L. Mann, Radcliffe/Harvard A.B.'77, M.I.T. Ph.D.'84, served in policy advisory positions in Washington at the Federal Reserve Board and Institute for International Economics and is now a Professor of International Economics and Finance at Brandeis University she and her husband Randy Hartnett of Great Falls, VA.
Mr. Mann was a devoted brother of Virginia Swartz of Pittsburg, PA, Helene Madigan of St. Paul, MN, Kenneth Mann of Burlington, VT, and the late Arthur Mann and Dorothy LeViness. He was delighted by his four grandchildren: Nicholas. Harry and Olivia Mann and Bennett Hartnett. Funeral was held from the Douglass Funeral Home, Lexington VA, Wednesday, June 21, 2006, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Brigid’s Church.
Robert Wellesley Mann, of Lexington, Massachusetts, was a pioneer in engineering design and education, and in rehabilitation and biomedical research. His research achievements were recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, one of only seven individuals so recognized. He supervised more than 300 M.I.T. theses, many of whose recipients now serve as senior faculty at institutions around the world.
A Brooklyn, New York native, Mann was proud of his education at Brooklyn Technical vocational high school. He was employed as a draftsman at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City before and after World War II military service where he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the Southwest Pacific theatre. He entered M.I.T. as a freshman on the G.I. Bill in February of 1947. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1950, his Master's in 1951 and his Doctor of Science in 1957. He joined the M.I.T. Mechanical Engineering faculty in 1953, became full professor in 1963, was appointed Germeshausen Professor in 1970 and then Whitaker Professor of Biomedical Engineering in 1974, an endowed chair he occupied until July 1992. He became Whitaker Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer, following his 41 years at M.I.T.
As an educator, Professor Mann transformed the design curriculum in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. in the 1960s by displacing traditional machine element subjects and machinery laboratories with project oriented approaches that involved his students in the entire design process from specification and conception through modeling and analysis, representation, fabrication and test. His approach was formalized at M.I.T. in the 1970s as the "Course 2.70 Design Contest", decades later by numerous national design contests now run at the secondary school level.
As chair of the Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design of the National Commission on Engineering Education he organized four national conferences on engineering design education. His research was largely realized through his supervision of M.I.T. undergraduate and graduate student projects, including 155 bachelors, 104 masters and 52 doctors theses, with many of the latter authors now serving as engineering faculty, and many others in industry. He is the author and co-author of over 400 publications, and named inventor on four patents.
Mann's penchant for innovation evolved along diverse paths that evidenced a convergence of engineering, design, research and ultimately medicine. At M.I.T. through the 1950's, he conducted research and development of air-to-air missile components with an emphasis on internal power systems, including the solid propellant, turbo alternator power supplies for Sparrow I and III, subsequently applied in the Hawk ground-to-air missile. During the same period, he followed early digital computer and graphics display research at M.I.T. and combined his draftsman and design experiences with this computer awareness by inaugurating the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) project at M.I.T. in the late 1950s.
By the 1960s, his research evolved to focus on technology to ameliorate human disabilities resulting from physical handicaps. Mann organized and led a group that addressed the communication, mobility, recreational, and vocational needs of blind persons. Outcomes included English-to-Braille computer translation and production systems and electronic mobility aids for blind travelers. His rehabilitation research then expanded to embrace the musculoskeletal system with the demonstration that brain signals could control a prosthesis replacing an amputated limb, the "Boston" arm. His recent studies of skeletal joints and osteoarthritis, together with related computer-aided surgery, explicated the biomechanical role of cartilage and include the only measurements of pressures on and in cartilage in vivo in the human hip.
Mann founded in 1975 the Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation which he directed, along with the Harvard-MIT Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, until he assumed emeritus status in 1992.
Dr. Mann's work in design and rehabilitation was recognized nationally and international1y, having served on the Ordinance Advisory Committee of the National Security Industrial Association and was chairman of the Department of Defense Advisory Group on Missile Auxiliary Power Systems. He was a member of the National Commission on Engineering Education and founder and chairman of its Committee on Authentic Involvement in Engineering Design. He served on the Committee for the Application of Computer-Aided Design of the American Ordnance Association.
As his research shifted to biomedical and rehabilitation engineering he joined the Advisory Committee of the National Braille Authority. In the National Research Council he was a member of the Committees on the Skeletal System and Prosthetics Research and Development and founder and chair of the latter's Subcommittee on Sensory Aids. He served on the NRC Committee on the National Needs for the Rehabilitation of the Physically Handicapped, on its Commissions on Life Sciences and on Strategic Technology for the Army, and its Committee on Space Biology and Medicine. In the Institute of Medicine Dr. Mann was on the Board on Health Sciences Policy and he co-chaired the study "New Medical Devices - Invention, Development and Use" published by the NAE/IOM. He served on the Scientific Review Board in the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served on the board or served as associate editor of engineering and biomedical engineering journals.
Dr. Mann served as Director and President of the Carroll Center for the Blind, Trustee and President of the National Braille Press, and as Consultant on Engineering Science at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He also served on the Board of Overseers of Youville Lifecare, and on the Corporations of the Mount Auburn Hospital and the Perkins School for the Blind.
With his wife, Margaret's passing in 2002, Professor Mann assumed her role in the charitable trust and foundation of her cousin, Flannery O'Connor, internationally renowned for her short stories, novels and letters. Professor Mann served as Co-Trustee of Mary Flannery O'Connor Charitable Trust and as Chairman of the Flannery O'Connor - Andalusia Foundation, Inc.
Professor Mann's contributions were acknowledged by M.I.T. through the award of two endowed chairs and his designation as the James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Awardee in 1983-84, established to "recognize extraordinary professional accomplishments of full-time members of the M.I.T. faculty." That same year, Mann also served as President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of M.I.T., only the second faculty member to so serve this century. In 1995, M.I.T. named him as the inaugural recipient of their Martin Luther King, Jr. Leadership Award.
He was elected a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, a Fel1ow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Founding Fellow of the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering. He received the Gold Medal of the ASME and the Goldenson Award for Outstanding Scientific Research in Technology for Cerebral Palsy and the Physically Handicapped, was the inaugural recipient of the ASME H.R. Lissner Award in Biomedical Engineering, and was honored by many other awards and recognitions.
While an M.I.T. undergraduate, Professor Mann met Margaret Ida Florencourt, who then was a Research Engineer at M.I.T. on Whirlwind, an early digital computer; they were married in September 1950. Their son, Robert W. Jr., M.I.T. S.B.'75, S.M.'77, has been a senior executive of several national and international airlines and now conducts his own airline industry analysis and consulting business in Port Washington, NY; he and his wife Susan have two sons and a daughter. Professor and Mrs. Mann's daughter, Dr. Catherine L. Mann, Radcliffe/Harvard A.B.'77, M.I.T. Ph.D.'84, served in policy advisory positions in Washington at the Federal Reserve Board and Institute for International Economics and is now a Professor of International Economics and Finance at Brandeis University she and her husband Randy Hartnett of Great Falls, VA.
Mr. Mann was a devoted brother of Virginia Swartz of Pittsburg, PA, Helene Madigan of St. Paul, MN, Kenneth Mann of Burlington, VT, and the late Arthur Mann and Dorothy LeViness. He was delighted by his four grandchildren: Nicholas. Harry and Olivia Mann and Bennett Hartnett. Funeral was held from the Douglass Funeral Home, Lexington VA, Wednesday, June 21, 2006, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Brigid’s Church.
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