Dick Lance was born in 1931 in Geneva, Illinois. His father was a tool and die maker and his mother worked at a 'box factory.' In 1949, Lance enrolled in the mechanical engineering program at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois. While there he entered the cooperative engineering program and worked at the Dunbar-Kapple Mfg. Co. in Geneva for one semester. In 1951 he transferred to the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana where he continued his study of mechanical engineering with emphasis on manufacturing. In 1952 he met there Virginia Ritson, his future wife.
Upon graduation at U of Ill, Lance joined the Minneapolis-Honeywell company, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was assigned as a test engineer evaluating jet engine fuel gauges and gyrocompasses. After only nine months with Honeywell, Lance was drafted into the US Army, entering as enlisted man on his birthday in 1954. He took basic training at Camp (now Fort) Chaffee in Arkansas, after which he was assigned to Aberdeen Proving Ground until a call for clerk-typists came from an engineering battalion at Fort Meade, just south of Aberdeen. There he was trained to type and served about twelve months in battalion headquarters. Early in 1956 Army regulations allowed college graduates to apply for an assignment where their training might be better used. As a result, Lance was reassigned to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he served three months in a tank development unit before being discharged to resume study in mechanical engineering, this time at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago. While a student there, he came met and studied with Prof. Peter Chiarulli (dec.), who urged him attend Brown University if he ever had the chance.
After completing the MSME degree at IIT, Lance was employed by the Ingersoll Milling Machine Company, Rockford, Illinois, where his position was 'analytical engineer,' performing calculations on ball and roller bearing lifetimes, for among other things. The urge to learn, however, got the best of him in Rockford and he soon applied for entrance to the PhD program at Purdue University. When the management at the Ingersoll Milling Machine Company learned of his plans, they offered him a scholarship, to the school of his choice. He chose Brown University.
Lance entered Brown in fall 1958 and he, his wife and two small daughters moved to Providence where he studied with William Prager, Daniel Drucker, Turan Onat and other leaders in the fields of plasticity and applied mechanics. He completed the requirements for the degree in early 1962 and accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor of Mechanics at Cornell, to start that summer.
His activities at Cornell spaned the academic and administrative spectra. He served as acting chair of the department, associate college dean for outreach and undergraduate affairs, as well as co-chair of the Cooperative Engineering Program in the College. He led several academic initiatives, including a study-abroad program for sophomore engineering students and an introduction to engineering course, now listed as ENGRI.
Lance retired in 1998 after a 36-year career at Cornell. In the first year of retirement he was a visiting professor of mechanical engineering at the Technische Universit”t, Hamburg-Harburg, Germany, where he helped inaugurate and Engineering Science program, with much of the instruction in English.
Lance and his wife, Virginia, now live in Chestertown, Maryland, where he applies his teaching experience in the Washington College Academy of Lifelong Learning giving courses in digital photography - a 'serious' hobby of Lance's - and pseudo-engineering courses, such as 'Why Things Don't Fall Down." In Chestertown he also swims, rides his bike and plays platform tennis (in winter).
Lance's research was concerned with plastic behavior of structures and the mechanics of composite materials. In the latter days of his service to the university, he worked on and practiced the use of the computer in teaching.
