In memoriam
FACULTY
Alan Foss
Professor Alan S. Foss
Chemical engineering emeritus professor Alan S. Foss died on February 22, 2006, at age 76, after a long illness.
Born in Stamford, CT, Foss earned his B.S. from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1952, and his M.Ch.E. (1954) and his Ph.D. (1957) from the University of Delaware. He joined the Berkeley chemical engineering faculty in 1961, after working for five years at DuPont, and he became a full professor in 1973. He was vice chair of the department from 1967-69, and in 1993 he served as adviser to the student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Foss was also a senior staff scientist at LBNL from 1975 until 1994.
Foss specialized in chemical process control and control system synthesis. He developed mathematical models of chemical reactors and interactive software for training students in process control.
Foss is fondly remembered as the editor of the Gilman Hall Newsletter. According to a brief autobiography published in that journal in December 1983, Foss told prospective graduate students that “there must be an irrepressible driving force to go into teaching.” Teaching was Foss’s driving force. After more than two decades on the faculty, he stated, “The greatest challenge is … our undergraduate students. There, I find that a rather delicate balance is needed in telling, asking, testing, challenging, encouraging, tutoring, correcting, stretching, leading. I am still searching for the right mix.”
Foss always thought of himself as a New Englander, having been born and educated there. He acquired his life-long love of lacrosse as a student at the Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts and coached the sport for many years in California.
Foss suffered a stroke in late 1993, but he continued to work on a significant NSF grant in collaboration with George Stephanopoulos of MIT to find new ways to include computation in undergraduate training related to process modeling. He retired in July 1994 but he was recalled to active teaching for the 1994-95 academic year.
Foss is survived by his wife of 45 years, Anna Màthà Foss, of Berkeley and by four children: son Willard (B.S. ’86, ChemE); and three daughters, Esther (B.A. ’85, Archit.), Emese, and Reka (B.A. ’95, Landscape Archit.).
Eugene E. Petersen
Professor Eugene E. Petersen
Eugene Edward Petersen, professor emeritus of chemical engineering, passed away at the age of 81 on October 27, 2005, after a short battle with cancer. Petersen was a leader in the field of reaction engineering and devoted his career to understanding the key unit of a chemical plant, the chemical reactor, where reactants are transformed into useful products. Through his development of pioneering theories and experiments, he helped transform a field that had been based on observation and experience to one of analytical principles.
Born and raised in Tacoma, WA, Petersen spent 1941 as a pre-engineering student at the University of Puget Sound. He then worked as a tool-and-die-making apprentice before joining the Army, where he served three years (1943-46) as a Private First Class. After completing his military service, he went back to college, receiving his B.S. (1949) and M.S. (1950) degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Washington, followed by a Ph.D. in fuel science from Pennsylvania State University in 1953.
Petersen joined the Division of Chemical Engineering (later to become the Department) as an instructor in 1953 and was appointed a full professor in 1965.
He had a long-standing interest in determining why catalysts failed and how that failure affected the active material. To further his understanding, he developed the Single-Pellet Reactor, an instrument that allows a definitive analysis of chemical, diffusional and poisoning phenomena in catalysis.
Petersen also developed a powerful theoretical model for predicting catalyst performance over its lifetime, and he produced Monte-Carlo simulations of transport and chemical reaction within porous catalysts. He was well known for developing the first detailed model of the operation of a fluid bed reactor and its catalyst regenerator, an important petroleum refining operation.
Petersen performed seminal work on surface reactions, mixing processes, and transport to, from and through solid catalysts. Also, by studying chemical kinetics in conjunction with heat and mass transfer principles, he generated important data that was used by design engineers as they scaled-up successful lab-bench experiments into large industrial reactors.
Petersen was recognized with the 1985 R. H. Wilhem Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering from AIChE for his unique contributions to the theory and experimental elucidation of catalyst deactivation phenomena. He had more than 90 publications, including his 1965 milestone textbook, Chemical Reaction Analysis, which taught generations of students the sophistications inherent in catalytic reaction engineering.
Within the department, Petersen was recognized as a clear, incisive, and encouraging teacher. Over his 38 years on the faculty, he mentored 28 master’s students and 27 doctoral students, many of whom went on to have illustrious careers in academia and industry.
Petersen retired in 1991, although he continued to perform research and stay connected with the college. He had many interests, including horticulture, poetry and piano.
A resident of Lafayette, he is survived by his wife of 57 years, Kathryn Dorothy Petersen; a son, Richard; a daughter, Renee Keller; and several grandchildren.
A fund for the Eugene E. Petersen Award in Chemical Engineering has been established in his memory to honor an outstanding chemical engineering student each year. Contributions may be sent to 420 Latimer Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1460.
A symposium in his honor will be held at the AIChE meetings in November in San Francisco. Please check the program for details.
Heinz Heinemann
Lecturer Heinz Heinemann
Heinz Heinemann, a long-time lecturer in chemical engineering and a chemistry researcher at LBNL, died November 23, 2005, of pneumonia in Washington, DC, at age 92.
During a 60-year career in industry and academia, Heinemann contributed to the invention and development of 14 commercial fossil fuel processes, received 75 patents and was the author of more than a hundred publications. Among his inventions was a process for converting methanol to gasoline. He also studied coal gasification and liquefaction.
Born in Berlin, Germany, Heinemann attended the University and Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Basel, before coming to the United States in 1938. He became a U.S. citizen in 1944. Over the next forty years, he worked for several petroleum companies, including the Mobil Research and Development Co., where he was manager of catalysis research. After retiring from industry in 1978, Heinemann joined LBNL as a researcher and became a lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering.
He was a co-founder of the Catalysis Society of North America and the International Congress of Catalysis. He was also the founder of Catalysis Reviews and worked as its editor for 20 years.
Heinemann received many honors, among them election to the National Academy of Engineering, a Distinguished Scientist/Engineer award from the Department of Energy, and the Murphree Award of the ACS.
He is survived by his wife of 10 years, Dr. Barbara Tenenbaum of Washington, DC; daughter Sue Heinemann; and son and daughter-in-law Peter M. Heinemann and Dana Kueffner. His first wife, Elaine P. Heinemann, died in 1993 after 46 years of marriage.
Contributions may be made to the Heinz Heinemann Memorial Fund, 420 Latimer Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1460.