Oral history interview with Lawrence B. Evans

2023-01-10T15:33:18-05:00

In his oral history Lawrence Evans begins by describing his parents and early life in New Mexico and Oklahoma. He describes the important influence that his father, a pharmacist by training, had in shaping an interest in the sciences. He talks about his early education and the decision to major in chemical engineering at the undergraduate level and to eventually pursue graduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan. He describes the graduate program at UM and his early encounters with computers and computer programming.

Evans tells how after receiving his PhD he came to MIT as an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering with funding through a two-year fellowship from the Ford Foundation. He talks about his early teaching at MIT, his early graduate students, and some consulting work he did. He tells how he became increasingly more interested in discovering how computers can be used to solve chemical engineering problems, and talks about his efforts to increase his knowledge in this area through research and writing. He talks of the formation of the CACHE committee, the work of the committee, and how he eventually became president of the group. He discusses in detail the Aspen Project and his decision at the end of the project to form a company based on Aspen’s work. He notes that he was inspired in this by the example of others at MIT who had successfully gone on to careers as entrepreneurs. He describes the formation of AspenTech and names many of the key early players and investors. He describes how AspenTech was able to expand; its early Europe focused strategy; its success against ChemShare and Simulation Sciences; its IPO, and other key events in the history of the firm. Evans provides a frank description of SEC actions with regard to him and several executives at AspenTech. He talks of his departure from AspenTech in 2005; his presidency of AIChE, his introduction to Javier Garcia-Martinez, and his decision to help establish a company based on Garcia-Martinez’s technology, Rive Technology. The oral history concludes with Evans reflecting on what the future holds for him as well as reflecting back on the values/principles that have guided his life’s work.