Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2000, 39, 2633-2634
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Robert S. Schechter The basic facts on R. S. (Bob) Schechter are these: B.S., Texas A & M University, 1950; Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1956, both in Chemical Engineering; Professor, The University of Texas, 1956-1997; Professor Emeritus, The University of Texas, 1997-present. These fact are, however, woefully inadequate to describe the man. More than any person I know, the things that make Bob Schechter an excellent professor, researcher, colleague, and friend are in the spaces between the acknowledged accomplishments. I write from the perspective of a new Assistant Professor, with whom, beginning in 1978, Bob graciously agreed to share his mature research program, and from the perspective of an older faculty member who aspires to call him a peer. Many of my impressions come from our association with a project on uranium leaching in the early 1980s. A portion of this project was to conduct a field test at a site in South Texas. The daily 200-mile round trips in a car gave much opportunity for conversation. These led to some preposterous statements:
“Lake, did you know I have never been in a grocery store before today?” or “I have never lived by myself. I passed seamlessly from my mother to my wife.” Many times, they led to technical discussions about what makes a Chinese spouting bottle work or why boat “Flatner’s” move or what Gibbs was really thinking about with those dividing surfaces. Often, Bob would say something riotously funny: You should ask him why the Rosenberg, TX, High football team always clustered around their coach so tightly during the halftime meetings. These anecdotes led to his frequent inclusion as a speaker at parties and meetings. There is a second career in the offing here, Victor Borge for the technical crowd. Bob’s technical accomplishments are in the area of applied thermodynamics, interpreted very broadly. These accomplishments start with the thermodynamics of surfactants and surfaces (useful in enhanced oil recovery), through the modeling of interactions of a flowing phase with a solid in a permeable medium. The coverage in this Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
10.1021/ie000538d CCC: $19.00 © 2000 American Chemical Society Published on Web 07/06/2000
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issue attests to this breadth. Before coming to The University of Texas I thought of Bob’s research as being primarily experimental. After all, he and Bill Wade were responsible for the spinning drop tensiometer, a device that has become the standard for measuring ultra-low interfacial tensions between fluid phases. But I found Bob to be a first-class theorist who has the uncommon talent of being able to express the abstractions of thermodynamics in elementary language. I have come to realize that this type of simplicity of expression is the mark of the true intellect. I cherish the advice that Bob has given me over the years. Two things in particular stand out: (1) On a response to a declined paper: “You should fight it if you think the decision is wrong. But understand the reasons for the decline thoroughly before doing so.” (2) On not getting a technical issue to work out: “Sometimes it is good when things don’t work out. This makes you think harder and usually leads to true novelty.” Bob has won virtually every award that an academician/researcher can. A much abbreviated list of the more important ones includes the following: (1) From the Society of Petroleum Engineers: Distinguished Member Certificate, 1993; the John Franklin Carll Award, 1994; Improved Oil Recovery Pioneer, 1996. (2) From The University of Texas: the Billy and Claude R. Hocott Distinguished Engineering Research Award (the first award), 1984; General Dynamics Teaching Excellence Award, 1987; Joe J. King Professional Engineering Achievement Award, 1991. (3) From the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers: Mineral Industry Education Award, 1997.
(4) From the American Society for Engineering Education: Senior Research Award, 1991. In addition, Bob was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in the United States in 1976 and named by the Prime Minister of France to the Chevalier of the Order of Palmes Academiques, for contributions to oil recovery research in 1980. As much as all these things, I value Bob for his integrity. He was the first source of advice for me as an academic chairman in confronting issues of ethics and fairness. This, of course, is part of his success as a researcher and teacher. He is the first to recognize faulty logic in his own work and to admit to it and correct it. Finally, Bob embodies the type of intellectual curiosity that should be commonplace at universities. He is currently looking into the causes of electrical storms and lightening, a subject far removed from past work. But he understands that the fundamental laws of physics apply to all phenomena and should, if correctly applied, lead to interesting and sometimes surprising insights. I am delighted to see this commemorative issue of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research in Bob’s honor. I also hope that this issue and my meager comments inspire emulation of Bob’s career by young chemical and petroleum engineering faculty everywhere. There is no better role model for this than Bob Schechter. Larry W. Lake Department of Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering The University of Texas at Austin Austin, Texas 78712 IE000538D
