Joe Iannicelli's employees call him Mr. Joe.
And his company headquarters beside U.S. 17 is nothing fancy. It has a nondescript lab, some old equipment under a tall lean-to and an unassuming office lobby.
You wouldn't know from appearances that Iannicelli, 81, holds a doctorate in organic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has more than 50 patents listed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Two of his three most recent hold enormous promise for nuclear energy production and for environmental cleanup.
Sitting in his modest office recently, with the patent certificates, complete with foil seals and scarlet ribbon, stacked neatly in front of him, Iannicelli told the stories behind them.
The first, for the process of manufacturing monobasic potassium phosphate, was issued to him and Joseph Pechtinand assigned to his company, J.I. Enterprises Inc.
It began as an order from PotashCorp to mix potassium hydroxide and phosphoric acid "one-to-one molecularly" and for Iannicelli to use his company's spray driers to convert the resulting liquid to a powder that could be mixed with cement.
"I knew it wouldn't work," he said.
He was right. There was a violent reaction: The mixture crystallized and clogged his equipment.
"I said, 'I'd like to give you a free test when we have a break in our schedule,'" he said.
"We just let it cool down, ran it through our homogenizer and ran it again. It worked," he said.
So what is the resulting powder good for?
As an additive, it triples the hardness of cement and the resulting mix sets in only three hours, Iannicelli said.
It can be used in construction to make super-strong buildings quickly in earthquake zones, Iannicelli said.
"It also absorbs gamma rays," he said.
That means it can be used for nuclear containment vessels without the need for lead shields, he said.
Another patent, issued March 30 for Iannicelli's method for "sub-glacial mineral reconnaissance and recovery," came with an unwanted adventure.
For more than 10 years, Iannicelli had known glaciers ground the stone beneath them into fine powder. He suspected that water beneath glaciers carried traces of minerals that could be detected in tests.
When he and his wife vacationed at Glacier National Park in Montana, Iannicelli collected water for testing. Not that it was easy. To get to the glacier, they had to ride a ferry across a lake, hike cross country to another lake for another ferry ride and take another hike. Suffering with a bad hip, Iannicelli couldn't keep up with the pace on the return trip.
Back home, he tested the meltwater and, as he suspected, he found cobalt, chromium, zinc, copper, lanthanum and other minerals.
When he submitted his patent, he told examiners the melt- water had come from an environmentally sensitive area.
"I didn't tell them it came from a national park," he said.
Asked how he planned to get to the water under the glaciers, Iannicelli thought the answer was obvious.
"I told them you just drill," he said. "Ice is much easier to drill through than rock."
He seems mystified that for all the hundreds of research projects going on with glaciers, no one thought of prospecting.
His most recently issued patent came July 27 for his "method and composition for sorbingtoxic substances."
Iannicelli figures that patent may be among the most important of the 50 or more he holds in the U.S. because the composition he uses is red mud, the nasty byproduct of processing bauxite ore to produce aluminum.
It has been known for some time that bauxite, which has its share of heavy metals and toxic substances, absorbs others, Iannicelli said.
The problem with red mud, Iannicelli said, is "the stuff is so alkaline, it leaches into groundwater and contaminates wells."
But Iannicelli decided to try "sulfidation," adding a small amount of sulfides to the red mud. The result was that it not only continued to absorb other hazardous substances, it did not release them — and the red mud can be hardened into brick to stabilize it, he said.
In tests, the sulfidized red mud absorbed mercury, zinc, lead, arsenic and cadmium among others and retained it.
"The more concentrated the mercury, the better it works," he said.
Iannicelli is considering an array of applications from decreasing the cost of scrubbing mercury from coal-fired power plant smokestacks and cleaning water discharges. He already is offering a free test to a pulp mill that discharges badly discolored water into a river.
Although known locally as a brilliant scientist, Iannicelli has gained attention in other ways.
He was jailed three days after Christmas for contempt for refusing to pay $68,795 he owed his ex-wife from their divorce 38 years ago. Three other judges had refused to find Iannicelli in contempt over the years, but his ex-wife's lawyer, Nathan Williams, finally found one who would, E.M. Wilkes III.
Iannicelli had vowed that his ex-wife and her lawyer would not get one dime because his former spouse had violated the court order herself by dumping their children. He vowed to waste away in jail rather than pay, but his current wife, worried about his health, paid the outstanding alimony against his wishes.
Now Iannicelli is working to unseat Nathan Williams' mother, Chief Superior Court Judge Amanda F. Williams, who is opposed by Mary Helen Moses in November's election.
Spending time in jail is in sharp contract to other items in his 10-page resume. He served on the Glynn County school board from 1998-2002 and was chairman in his final year. It was one of the most tumultuous times in the school board's history, with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools threatening to yank the school system's accreditation because members of the board overstepped their authority.
He has plenty of friends, however, including many in high places. He lost an important one when Senior U.S. District Judge Anthony A. Alaimo, a man revered in the community, died about the time Iannicelli was jailed.
He headed the Jekyll Island Citizens Association from 1993-95, was president of the Georgia Tidewater Conservation Association from 1991-92 and once was foreman of a county grand jury.
Tice Eyler, a retired Navy captain and also a member of the Jekyll Island association, said his friend Iannicelli always remains true to his convictions and is quick to rely on the courts when he's wronged.
Local organizations are grateful for his loans of his collection of vintage Cadillac convertibles, especially for Veterans Day parades.
"It's not just two cars, it's four or five if we need them, always polished up and looking sharp," said Mike Browning, chairman of the Veterans Council of the Golden Isles.
The veteran of the year and featured speakers ride in the Cadillacs as do elderly World War II veterans who can no longer march in the parade.
"It's just a fine example of what a person can do for their community, and he does it every year," Browning said.
Ira Glass of National Public Radio's "This American Life" has collected information on Iannicelli for a future segment.
"He asked people who was the most interesting character on Jekyll Island. They said, 'Joe Iannicelli, but don't tell him I told you,'" Iannicelli said, laughing.
