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Sam Rothman

GWU department chairman

Sam Rothman, 92, a retired Navy Department chemist who became chairman of George Washington University’s engineering administration department, died Feb. 12 at Bedford Court retirement community in Silver Spring. He had pneumonia.

The death was confirmed by his grandson, Justin Sosne.

From 1946 to 1955, Dr. Rothman worked at the National Bureau of Standards’s plastics division helping develop plasma expanders crucial during loss of blood and plasma.

He then held high-level research and development positions in the Navy Department. He worked on a range of research areas, including submarine technology and studies on the impact of increased radiation on human health and weaponry.

Dr. Rothman worked at GWU’s engineering administration department from 1974 to 1990, serving nine years as chairman. While at the university, he worked on a two-volume study on the Navy’s research and development history.

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Samuel Rothman was a native of Brooklyn; he later legally changed his first name to Sam. He was a 1943 chemistry graduate of Long Island University. He received a master’s degree in 1954 and a doctorate in 1959, both in management of technical organizations from American University. He was an Army Air Forces veteran of World War II and completed an advanced program in meteorology at the University of Chicago in 1944.

He did volunteer work at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brookside Gardens in Wheaton.

His wife, Florence Rosen Rothman, whom he married in 1943, died in 1997. Survivors include two daughters, Sandra Sosne of Raleigh, N.C., and Arlene Bennof of Greenbelt; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

— Adam Bernstein

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