Though his mother did not attend college, the importance of education was always ingrained in Dr. Lynden A. Archer’s head.
Growing up in Guyana, his older brother received a scholarship to Columbia University, where he eventually worked his way up to earning a doctorate in mechanical engineering.
“That set the stage for everyone,” says Archer, the James A. Friend Family Distinguished Professor in Engineering at Cornell University. “So, we all more or less followed in lockstep.”
During his senior year of college, Archer applied to the University of Southern California. He became one of two students accepted as part of an international merit scholarship.
“They had the vision of recruiting up to two international students each year with full tuition scholarships as a way of simultaneously increasing the intellectual strength and diversity of the engineering student pool,” he says. “I was totally flattered that I was one of the first two students selected to receive this honor.”
Shortly after, he went on to earn his doctorate degree in chemical engineering at Stanford University.
While at Stanford, Archer attended a talk by Dr. Ronald G. Larson, who, at the time, was working at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
