Robert Charpie, a former chairman and chief executive of Cabot Corp., died on October 13 at age 86. He was the first person outside of the Cabot family to become chairman of the company.
Charpie was born in Cleveland and served in the Army during World War II. He received his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1950. He then joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a physicist, and later became director of the reactor division. In 1986, he became president of Bell & Howell in Chicago. He retired from Cabot Corp. in 1988. He was a member of the AAAS and served on the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation.
