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{{Image|Warren Kendall Lewis.jpg|right|200px|Warren Kendall Lewis}}
'''Warren Kendall Lewis''' (August 1882–March 1975) was a major leader in the development of [[chemical engineering]] in the [[United States]]. He has often been referred to as the father of modern chemical engineering for his role in coordination of [[chemistry]], [[physics]] and [[engineering]] into an independent discipline serving the chemical industry.


Born on a farm in [[Laurel]], [[Delaware]], Lewis transferred to [[Newton]], [[Massachusetts]] during his high school days. He  subsequently entered the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) in 1901 and enrolled as a [[mechanical engineering]] student. A year later, he transferred to the chemical engineering option of MIT's chemistry department. He graduated with a degree in chemistry and, following a year as a laboratory assistant, was awarded a fellowship to study [[physical chemistry]] at the [[University of Breslau]] (Universität Breslau) [[in Germany]].<ref>In 1741, [[King Frederick II]] of [[Prussia]] seized [[Lower Silesia]] (which included the city of [[Wroclaw]]) from [[Poland]], annexed it to Germany and renamed Wroclaw as Breslau. Two centuries later, at the end of [[World War II]], most of Lower Silesia (including the city of Breslau) was returned to Poland and Breslau was renamed again as Wroclaw. The University of Breslau is now known as the [[University of Wroclaw]].</ref>
After receiving his Sc.D. degree from the University of Breslau in 1908, Lewis returned to MIT for a year as a research associate followed by a year as a chemist in a leather [[tannery]]. He then joined the faculty of MIT as an assistant professor in 1910. He was promoted to a full professor in 1914 and subsequently served as the first head of MIT's new chemical engineering department from 1920 to 1929.
Lewis then retired from the head of the MIT's chemical engineering department so as to devote more time for his teaching and research. He remained as a member of the MIT faculty until his death in 1975 at the age of 92.<ref name=NAP>[http://nap.edu/html/biomems/wlewis.pdf Biographical Memoirs: Warren Kendall Lewis] National Academies Press</ref><ref name=ACS>[http://www.acs.org/cen/priestley/recipients/1947lewis.html 1947: Warren K. Lewis] C&EN Special Issue, 85th Anniversary of the Priestley Medal – Vol. 86, No. 14, April 7, 2008</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=R. C. Darton, D. G. Wood and R. G. H. Prince (Editors)|title=Chemical Engineering: Visions of the World|edition=1st Edition|publisher=Elsevier Science|year=2003|id=ISBN 0-444-51309-4}}</ref>
==Publications==
In the period before 1920, Lewis recognized that an education in chemical engineering had a need for a more unifying approach. Toward that end, he worked with two other MIT professors, [[William H. Walker]] and [[William H. McAdams]], to identify and quantify what they considered to be the "unit operations" used in the chemical industry, namely [[distillation]] and other [[separation processes]], [[vaporization]], [[heat transfer]], [[combustion]], [[fluid flow]], [[filtration]], and so forth. In 1923, they produced the classic book ''Principals of Chemical Engineering''<ref>{{cite book|author=W.H. Walker, W.K. Lewis and W.H. McAdams|title=Principles of Chemical Engineering|edition=First Edition|publisher=McGraw-Hill|year=1923|id=}}</ref> which greatly stimulated the evolution of chemical engineering and encouraged the creation of chemical engineering departments in universities worldwide.
Lewis's early work as a chemist at a leather tannery got him interested in [[colloid|colloidal phenomena]], and his subsequent research on [[clay]], [[textile]]s and [[plastics]] expanded his knowledge and produced a book in collaboration with [[Lombard Squires]] and [[Geoffrey Broughton]], ''The Industrial Chemistry of Colloidal and Amorphous Materials''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Warren K. Lewis, Lombard Squires and Geoffrey Broughton|title=The Industrial Chemistry of Colloidal and Amorphous Materials|edition=1st Edition|publisher=McMillan Company|year=1942|id=}}</ref>
All in all, Lewis published 3 books, 81 patents and about 125 papers between 1909 and 1959.<ref name=NAP/>
==Research and other activities==
Of the many areas of applied research that interested Lewis, distillation was one of his prime interests. He became a consultant on [[Petroleum refining processes|petroleum refining]] and  soon saw that the [[alcohol]] industry employed more sophisticated distillation techniques than used in petroleum refineries. Existing patents on separating [[Petroleum crude oil|petroleum]] fractions exhibited to him a lack of the basic physics physical chemistry of fractional distillation and he determined to put fractional distillation on a sound scientific basis. During his career, Lewis published 13 papers on distillation and 19 of his 81 patents involved distillation.
During [[World War I]], Lewis was very active first in the [[U.S. Bureau of Mines|Bureau of Mines]] and then in the [[Chemical Warfare Service]],<ref>The Chemical Corps is the branch of the United States Army tasked with defending against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons. The corps was founded as the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I and subsequently became the Chemical Corps in 1946.</ref> where he was led the research on gas defense and the manufacture of poisonous gas protective devices.
In [[World War II]], Lewis was a consultant to the federal [[Office of Scientific Research and Development]] and was appointed to participate in a committee that was assessing the military value of [[uranium ]] as an explosive. By early 1944, he was also assigned to the [[Manhattan Project]] as an expert to troubleshoot the effectiveness of [[thermal diffusion]] as a complement to [[gaseous diffusion]] for enriching the amount of [[uranium–235]] in refined [[uranium]] (U).<ref>Refined uranium is also referred to as ''natural uranium'' and contains the same [[isotope|isotopic]] ratio as found in nature, namely 0.7 weight % uranium-235, 99.3 weight % [[uranium-238]], and a trace of [[uranium-234]].</ref>
Lewis was also involved in the development of the [[thermal cracking]] of petroleum so as to increase the yield of [[gasoline]] in petroleum refineries. When the use of fixed beds of [[catalyst]]s for cracking petroleum evolved, which greatly increased the [[Gasoline#anti-knock rating|anti-knock quality]] and yield of gasoline, he saw that using catalysts in the form of very fine powders, suspended in the petroleum [[vapor]]s to be cracked, could lead to a continuous fluid bed cracking process to replace fixed bed cracking. He and [[Edwin R. Gilliland]] (another MIT professor) participated in the development of what is now known as [[fluid catalytic cracking]] (FCC) and the first full-scale FCC unit began operation in 1942 in the midst of World War II. Fluid catalytic cracking produced a [[Gasoline#octane rating|high-octane]] gasoline that greatly enhanced the performance of the British and American airplanes during the war. Obviously, in both wars, Lewis's engineering know-how was highly valued by many organizations.
==Awards and Honors==
During his lifetime, Lewis received numerous awards and honors, including those listed below:
*1936: Perkin Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry (British)
*1938: Member of the National Academy of Sciences
*1947: Priestley Medal of the American Chemical Society
*1948: President’s Medal for Merit
*1949; Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemists
*1956: First American Chemical Society Award in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry
*1957: American Petroleum Institute Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement
*1958: Founders Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers
*1965: Member of the National Academy of Engineering
*1965: National Medal of Science
==References==
{{reflist}}

Revision as of 22:57, 20 January 2010

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