T. Marshall Hahn

Who is T. Marshall Hahn?

Thomas Marshall Hahn Jr. was President of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University from 1962 to 1974 and Director of Georgia Pacific from 1983 to 1993. He received his B.S. degree in physics from the University of Kentucky in 1945.

Born in Lexington, Kentucky, he was educated in the Lexington, Kentucky public schools before going to the University of Kentucky, where he graduated "with highest honors". After graduation he served in the U.S. Navy and was a physicist for U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory. After his navy service, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1949. He was a research assistant at MIT, beginning in 1947. After graduating from MIT, he returned to the University of Kentucky as associate professor and then professor of physics.

In 1954, he went to Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia as head of the Department of Physics. He was the leading force in establishing a doctoral program in nuclear engineering physics at VPI, and in the acquisition of the nuclear reactor simulator that was put into operation in 1957. From 1959 to 1962, he served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Kansas State University.