INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
EDITORIAL
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Chemical EngineeringA New Consensus?
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uring the past 15 years or so, the profession of chemical engineering
D has been swinging to and fro like a weathervane in a tornado. Significant advances in understanding of fundamental physical and chemical phenomena, coupled with general availability of computers and the sharp rise in federally financed engineering research, have put us all under stresses that have come close to destroying the professionor at least fragmenting it into groups of specialists out of touch with each other. Chemical engineering, of course, is not unique in undergoing this period of stress. Other branches of engineering, as well as most of the physical and social sciences, are having their problems as well. And to complicate the situation, the chemical industry is beginning to look like a mature industry rather than the growth industry it has been up to a few years ago. This change is forcing chemical engineers into a greater emphasis on efficiency and reliability and less on innovation and daring. It appears now, though, that chemical engineering is beginning to find itself again as a self-aware entity, although not as the same entity it was before these recent stresses were put upon it. The right and left hands (transport phenomena and pump specifying, for example) show signs of being willing to admit once again that they belong to the same body. But the new entity encompasses more territory and is consequently easier to misrepresent or see only part of than was the case 20 years ago. Hence the divisive pressures remain strong. Because the entity is multifaceted, the definition of value depends on the point of view. For example, the pecking order of status (the closer to Science, the greater the Status), too obvious today to remain unspoken, tends to place a premium on scientific, rather than pragmatic, orientation. The different intellectual, temporal, and economic demands of research, process and product development, design, construction, and operation of chemical plants call for different kinds of people-all called chemical engineers. The increasingly sharp questions put by Congress relative to the assumed self-justification of Science are helping the other aspects of chemical engineering-the profit- or utility-oriented in particularto gain a hearing for their claims for social and professional significance, as well as economic utility. And the greater numbers of engineers in operating rather than scientific functions support the broader view of engineering as more than applied Science.
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VOL. 5 7
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DECEMBER 1 9 6 5
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