When Jim joined the Army Air Corp and Jerry had enrolled in the Navy V12 program at the University of California in Berkeley, it was Bob's turn at chief cook and bottle washer.  Bob would rather spend his time studying and soon found when he cooked dinner a little too long, Dad said, "Bob, you could burn water" and turned the duty over to Denny, who was a master chef. Needless to say Bob was thrilled that he was fired and found it hard to keep from smiling. Bob finished high school in 3 years with a 4.0 GPA.  

At 17, Judge Doyle, a long time friend of the family, awarded Bob an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy.  Bob soon found himself bored with the routine in Annapolis and threatened to leave, but a visit with Dad and Dr. Gustina helped him recognize the opportunity he was forfeiting and he changed his mind, graduating with honors and commissioned an officer in the US Air Force,  

In recognition of his accomplishments Bob was assigned the University of Illinois graduate program and subsequently awarded a PHD in chemistry.  Bob was deployed to the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore where he was assigned to the Subsonic Low Altitude Missile program, a nuclear powered drone capable delivering an atomic warheads anywhere in the world.  SLAM met with a disaster during a demonstration to JFK and the program was cancelled.  

Bob took advantage of the opportunity and after a short time with with Stanford Research Institute, he founded Finngan Instruments where he pioneered the Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer. The company later became Finnigan Corporation and the Finnigan GCMS became the standard for identifying pollution and drugs by hospital laboratories and government environmental testing stations.  Bob was inducted into the American Chemical Society Hall of Fame and awarded the Winston Churchill Medal of Wisdom.