John C. Haas

Haas was the son of Otto Haas, founder of the chemical company Rohm and Haas, and his wife, astronomer Phoebe Waterman Haas. Rohm and Haas was founded by Otto Haas and Otto Rohm in Germany in 1907. Originally a leather-tanning business, the company expanded into the United States, opening a branch in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1911. It subsequently became a more broadly based chemical and plastics company. Haas grew up in Haverford, Pennsylvania, with his parents and his older brother F. Otto Haas. He attended the Quaker Haverford Friends School, and then Episcopal Academy, from which he graduated in 1936. Haas attended Amherst College, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1940, majoring in chemistry. He then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving a master's degree in chemical engineering in 1942. ==Career and family==

Haas was employed as a process engineer at Rohm and Haas as of 1942, working at the Bridesburg plant in Philadelphia. After serving in the navy during World War II, he returned to Rohm and Haas in 1946. He worked as a manager in the company's production facilities in Knoxville, Tenn., and Houston, Texas. In Houston, he met his future wife, Chara A. Cooper (1927-2012). The couple were married in Bryn Athyn on June 21, 1952. He was named vice chairman of the board in 1959. After his father's death in 1960, Haas became executive vice president, and his brother F. Otto Haas became president and chief executive officer. Haas became chairman in 1974, and served as chairman from 1974 to 1978. ==Philanthropy==

In 1960, Throughout his life Haas was active with many charitable organizations, including the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Philadelphia, the Natural Lands Trust, and the Opportunities Industrialization Center of America, established by Baptist civil rights leader Leon Sullivan. As a civic leader, Haas helped to found the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in 1976, served on the board of governors of Temple University Health System, and was a trustee emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The John C. Haas Archive of Science and Business at the Chemical Heritage Foundation is named in his honor, and includes the Rohm and Haas Company archives. Haas and his brother F. Otto Haas received the Edward Powell Memorial Award in 1987 for their philanthropic work in Philadelphia. They donated the award's cash prize to the Philadelphia Committee for the Homeless. Haas was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1992. ==Political activities==

Haas was an early opponent of the Vietnam War. ==Conservation==

He was also an active proponent of conservation. In 2009 he and his wife gave a 160-acre hamlet known as Waterloo Mills, in Easttown Township, Chester County, to the Brandywine Conservancy for permanent preservation. They also entrusted 200 acres near Waterloo Mills to the Conservancy. Another 35 acres, with a mansion, were given to Episcopal Academy for a Lower School campus. ==Later life==

Haas died of natural causes on April 2, 2011, at the age of 92. ==External links==