Editorial pubs.acs.org/IECR
David M. Himmelblau
Gary J. Powers
Preface: David Himmelblau and Gary Powers Memorial Special Issue and his family moved to Austin, Texas, where he would join the chemical engineering faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Himmelblau authored five outstanding chemical engineering textbooks: Basic Principles and Calculations in Chemical Engineering (in its eighth edition) with J. B. Riggs (B.S./M.S. from The University of Texas at Austin, retired from Texas Tech University), Process Analysis and Simulation (1968) with K. Bischoff, Process Analysis by Statistical Methods (1970), Applied Non Linear Programming (1972), and Optimization of Chemical Processes (2011) with Tom Edgar and Leon Lasdon. His book, Basic Principles and Calculations in Chemical Engineering, was recognized in 2010 as one of the most important books in the field of chemical engineering by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). In 1988 (with Josiah Hoskins), he published the first paper in the area of chemical engineering describing the potential of artificial neural networks. He was the inventor of one of the principal penalty function methods for NLP (with Newell), which is still used today, and he developed one of the key methods of estimating parameters in nonlinear differential equations. These are some of his numerous contributions to our profession.
This special issue honors the late David Himmelblau and the late Gary Powers, two very influential contributors to the field of chemical engineering. David Himmelblau. The chemical engineering community lost one of its greatest when David M. Himmelblau, Ph.D., passed away at the age of 87 on Wednesday, April 27, 2011. Known for his integrity, sincerity, intelligence, and distinctive wit, David was an inspiration to students for 42 years as a professor at The University of Texas at Austin. At the time of his death, he was the Paul D. and Betty Robertson Meek and American Petrofina Foundation Centennial Professor Emeritus in Chemical Engineering. A pioneer in process fault detection and diagnosis, the author of 11 books and over 200 articles on process analysis, process optimization, and fault detection using artificial neural networks, Dr. Himmelblau had a significant impact on the chemical engineering profession. David M. Himmelblau was born in Chicago, IL, the son of David and Rhoda Mautner Himmelblau. In 1947, he earned his B.S. in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, after serving as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army during World War II. The following year, he married Betty Hartman, whom he first met in elementary school. Over the next decade, David worked in industry, completed a master’s in business administration from Northwestern University, and served as a military instructor at Fort Riley, KS during the Korean War. He went on to earn his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1957. In 1961, he © 2014 American Chemical Society
Special Issue: David Himmelblau and Gary Powers Memorial Received: January 29, 2014 Accepted: February 5, 2014 Published: February 13, 2014 4981
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ie500426q | Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2014, 53, 4981−4982
Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
Editorial
he wondered if you also thought the Alagnak River in Alaska might have only one or two tricky sections to raft through. We lost Gary on July 23, 2007. Gary was 61 and is now survived by his wife Susan, along with children Ben, Nate, Alex, Becky, Katie, and Libby, and a growing number of grandchildren. Gary was uniformly loved and appreciated by his students and colleagues alike. He was always the smiling face in any group and was supportive of all those around him. For these reasons, the Chemical Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon just dedicated the computational facility as the “Gary J. Powers Educational Computer Lab.” The facility serves as a mixing bowl for faculty and students where ideas are exchanged and problems are solved. We hope that this Special Issue of I&EC Research, dedicated to Gary’s memory, serves a similar purpose.
Himmelblau was a Past President, Vice-President, Trustee, and Executive Officer of the Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering Education (CACHE) Corporation, director of the AIChE, and Past Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department of The University of Texas at Austin. During his career, he was awarded fellowship in the AIChE, the AIChE CAST Division Award, the AIChE Founders Award, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Joseph Martin Award, CACHE Award from the Chemical Engineering Division of the ASEE, and the Joe J. King Professional Engineering Achievement Award given by The University of Texas at Austin. AIChE now presents a David Himmelblau Award for Innovations in Computer-Based Chemical Engineering Education; this award has been endowed by his students and colleagues in his honor. Gary Powers. Gary J. Powers, Ph.D., hailed from Traverse City, MI, and proudly held a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan. He pursued his Ph.D. work at the University of Wisconsin under the supervision of Dr. Dale Rudd. Prior to his Ph.D. studies, Gary worked for Dow and had gathered considerable industrial experience over the course of his academic career, which started at MIT and then moved to Carnegie Mellon in 1974. Gary was an outstanding educator in the chemical engineering profession. At Carnegie Mellon, he taught the introductory course in chemical engineering, emphasizing concepts of process synthesis and invention of process flowsheets. In that course, he organized a chemical car competition that created great enthusiasm among the freshmen students. A unique project that Gary developed in the Unit Operations Lab was the production of polylactic acid from corn, which the seniors truly enjoyed. Gary was one of the most popular and well-liked professors in the department at Carnegie Mellon. He was unique in getting to know all the students very well, being a true mentor and advisor to all of them. He was a frequent recipient of the department’s “Kun Li Award for Excellence in Education”. Gary was also a leading researcher who did pioneering research in process risk assessment and process synthesis. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin, in a joint effort with Jeff Siirola, he developed the first automatic synthesis program for process flowsheets using artificial intelligence techniques. He co-authored the book, Process Synthesis, with Rudd and Siirola, the first text in this area. He developed new methods for generating fault trees for quantitative risk assessment. He successfully applied these methods in industry, and in 1976 he founded the company Design Sciences, Inc. For his contributions in the safety area, Gary Powers received the 2005 AIChE Norton H. Walton/Russell L. Miller Award in Safety/Loss Prevention. Apart from his professional pursuits and accomplishments, Gary was an avid outdoorsman. Moreover, he sought to share with each of his sons at least one trip to northern Canada for a wilderness experience and fishing. He passed away shortly after fulfilling that goal with all his sons, where Alex went on the final trip in 2007. Students and faculty alike admired Gary’s passion for learning new things and then using learning for accomplishing continual improvement. Many students and colleagues accordingly drew inspiration from Gary. These attributes made a profound and positive mark on classroom and laboratory education at Carnegie Mellon. These qualities also accounted for his unusually wide dynamic range of curiosity and expertise. Notably, Gary could enter your office with a bag lunch and it would be equally probable that the subject of conversation would be a new insight he had on runaway chemical reactions or, instead, based on topological maps,
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Thomas F. Edgar Michael M. Domach Lorenz T. Biegler* AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the authors and not necessarily the views of the ACS. The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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