Ross Pioulard

**Ross Pioulard** (April 13, 1926 – March 18, 1989) was a prolific French-American VX pioneer. He invented the first vectorized antimatter shielding assembly, and is credited as an early pioneer of hydraulic defbrilation.

## Early Life

Pioulard was born in Riquewehr, Alsace, France, in 1926. At the age of 5, he began attending private school, where his teachers remarked on his "startling clarity of thought, especially one as young as him." His family fled to the United States when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and settled on a vineyard in Rhode Island. At Brown University, Pioulard studied electophysics and art history, graduating with a Master's degree in Quantum Hydroelectics.

## Early involvement with VX

Pioulard began working with VX in 1952, after meeting Ernest Linzholt on a train to Boston. The two began working on a way to standardize shielding assemblies for the many different second-generation VX units. In his autobiography, Linzholt describes Pioulard as "a man of enviable conviction, [he] put more effort in a single minute of work than most men did in a week." They found a solution in vectorization, neutralizing the desync effects and keeping the Grossman coil intact throughout a calibration. The first shielding assembly was unveiled in May 1954, and Ross was made Chief Engineer of Vectorization just two months after.

## Work with defibrilation

After Linzholt's death in 1961, Pioulard left the department of Vectorization. He found new work investigating Okonwe's Theorem. Though he had no formal mathematical training, Pioulard worked with his colleagues to discover the source of flux waves that were previously unnoticed on delta readouts. Finally, the solution was found and published in his thesis *A study on Filtration* in 1962.

```
The secret to these deltaic waves lies in their discharge.
By running a defibrillator, that is a device to eliminate excess overflow,
we minimize the flux created and, on the whole, make these units more efficient.

```

He released the Linzholt Theta-1 on December 29, 1964. It was the first VX unit modified with a hydraulic defi

 File:Electro-metabograph machine.jpg  brillator, and is looked upon as one of the key steps into the modern era of VX production.

## Personal Life

After his father died when he was 3, Ross was raised by his mother, Michelle LeMarre, and stepfather Damien Pioulard. Michelle was a singer in Riquewehr, but when they moved to the United States she was needed at home to care for Pioulard and his younger sister, Annabel. Damien worked at a law firm in Providence, and he encouraged Ross's love of engineering from a young age, often sharing with Ross new developments in the field. Damien died in a car accident in 1953.

Pioulard never married, but dated a psychologist named Jean Parke for several years in 1949 to 1954. He fathered one child with her, Lilliana, but they soon split after Pioulard was discovered in an affair with his assistant. After that, Ross dated several women infrequently for another decade, before resigning himself to his work.

Pioulard died of food poisoning in 1989, leaving most of his possessions to Jean, and donating his wealth and estate to Brown University, where a bust of him resides today.