The award is named after Dr. Mortimer T. Harvey, who is the "father" of commercial applications of cashew nutshell liquid (CNSL). Dr. Harvey characterized the chemical structure of CNSL in the 1920s and 1930s while a student at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and Columbia University in New York City. After finishing his graduate work, he formed HARVEL Corp. to continue research into commercial applications of CNSL. Most of the significant patents on CNSL up to the 1950s were in the name of HARVEL. The most significant of these was the one for friction particles, which is used in the development of brake linings.