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The University of Utah that exists today was born in the decades immediately following the end of the Second World War, a period of unequalled growth and expansion frequently (and with good reason) called the Olpin era for the man who was then head of the institution. Albert Ray Olpin -- scientist, educator, internationalist, and "Utah Man" -- was born June 1, 1898 in Pleasant Grove, a little farming community located 25 miles south of Salt Lake City. The first son of eight children, young Ray (never Albert or Al) worked on the family farm and learned his father's trades of cabinet making and woodworking. He was accepted into the business program at Brigham Young University at the age of about 16, but left school a year later to serve a four year mission in Japan for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints -- an experience he called one of the greatest of his life because it inspired in him a deep and abiding admiration and appreciation for the people and cultures of other nations. Olpin resumed his education on his return to the United States, and he graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics in 1923. In 1930 he received a doctorate in physics from Columbia University in New York City.

The youthful Olpin's promise as a scientist was no doubt apparent because he was persuaded to change his course of study from business to physics at Brigham Young University by respected physicist Harvey Fletcher (father of the man who succeeded Olpin as president of the University of Utah), and later he was offered a position in the prestigeous research laboratories of the Bell Telephone Company while still just a doctoral student at Columbia. Olpin's assignment at Bell was in the electro-optical department, where for eight years he played a visible and significant role in the development of "electronic" television -- newfangled technology able to transmit live images through space without the use of wires. Olpin left Bell Labs in 1933 to become Director of Research for the Kendall Mills, a leading textile manufacturer in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he later served for a time as chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers' research advisory committee. Prior to the outbreak of World War II in 1939 he accepted the positions of Executive Director of the Ohio State Research Foundation, Field Director of the Engineering Experiment Station, and Professor of Industrial Research at Ohio State University, and under his leadership the OSRF participated in many important government sponsored research projects (including several related to the development of the atomic bomb) during the war.

Olpin came to the University of Utah on January 1, 1946, and he was formally inaugurated the seventh president on October 16, 1946. On his retirement in June, 1964 he accepted the position of President Emeritus and continued his work on behalf of the university as a consultant on the development of intercultural programs. He died March 7, 1983.