Jim Waters - 2006 Martin Gold Medal
Born October 7, 1925 in Lincoln, Nebraska, his family moved to Massachusetts in 1942. He graduated from Framingham High School in 6/43 and from Columbia University (Navy V-12) in 2/46 with a BS in Electrical Engineering. He served as an Ensign in the US Navy until 5/46. He received an honorary Degree as Doctor of Science from Northeastern University in 6/93.
In 9/48 he married Faith C. Pigors and is the father of two children, Richard C. Waters and Barbara W. Roop. He has four grandchildren, Andrew, Emily, Alec and Matthew Waters.
He worked for Baird Associates Inc. in Cambridge, MA as a project manager for one year (2/47-12/47) before starting his own company, James L. Waters Inc., to develop and manufacture infrared gas analyzers. He sold his first company to Mine Safety Appliance Co in 1955 and worked for MSA until 9/58, managing the infrared analyzer operations.
In 9/58 he founded Waters Associates Inc. with five employees. After two years of developing instruments for others, he developed and marketed process control instruments ('60-'62), then obtained the exclusive license for Gel Permeation Chromatography from Dow Chemical Co. By 1963 the company had 75 employees, $3,000,000 in annual sales and subsidiaries in England and West Germany. In 1967-'71 he transformed Waters Associates to an HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) company. Waters dominated the market with a 40% market share while competing with DuPont, Varian, Perkins-Elmer and Hewlett Packard. He merged the company with Millipore in 1980. Today, Waters Corporation has separated from Millipore and has more than 3,000 employees, a 35% market share of HPLC, annual sales of $1,180 million and a successful public offering in 1995.
Since 1980 he has been a private Venture Capitalist. He is currently involved with 5 companies; investing in them and working with the management as a mentor to develop the potential of each business.
He founded Waters Foundation (a private foundation) in 1957 and has made major contributions to universities, social organizations and to the improvement of curriculum in elementary and secondary schools using System Dynamics. To date, his contributions total more than $20,000,000.
He holds 7 patents in the field of instrumentation.
He has served on several boards of directors and is a trustee emeritus of Northeastern University.
His public service has been as a Framingham Town Meeting member, a member of the Framingham North High School building committee and both as a member (1960 to 1969) and twice as chairman of the Framingham School Committee.