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Warren Kendall Lewis (August 1882–March 1975) was a major leader in the development of chemical engineering. 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 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.[1]
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 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.[2][3][4]
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[5] which greatly stimulated the evolution of chemical engineering and encouraged the creation of chemical engineering departments in universities worldwide.
All in all, Lewis published 3 books, 81 patents and about 125 papers between 1909 and 1959.[2]
Research 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 and soon saw that the alcohol industry employed more sophisticated distillation techniques than used in petroleum refineries. Existing patents on separating petroleum fractions exhibited to him a lack of the basic physics and and physical chemistry of fractional distillation and he determined to put 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.
Awards and Honors
References
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Biographical Memoirs: Warren Kendall Lewis National Academies Press
- ↑ 1947: Warren K. Lewis C&EN Special Issue, 85th Anniversary of the Priestley Medal – Vol. 86, No. 14, April 7, 2008
- ↑ R. C. Darton, D. G. Wood and R. G. H. Prince (Editors) (2003). Chemical Engineering: Visions of the World, 1st Edition. Elsevier Science. ISBN 0-444-51309-4.
- ↑ W.H. Walker, W.K. Lewis and W.H. McAdams (1923). Principles of Chemical Engineering, First Edition. McGraw-Hill.