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S . GEORGE B A N K OFF
1921–2011
Elected to NAE in 1996
“For contributions to the field of two-phase flow and heat transfer and its
application to nuclear-reactor thermohydraulics.”
BY JULIO M. OTTINO AND STEPHEN DAVIS
S. GEORGE BANKOFF, professor emeritus of chemical
engineering at Northwestern University, whose research into
the fundamentals of heat transfer and two-phase flow won him
recognition in the fields of chemical and nuclear engineering,
died July 13, 2011. He was 89.
George was born on October 7, 1921, in Brooklyn. Three
years later his father was killed in a robbery, leaving his mother
to raise him and his siblings alone. Nevertheless, he excelled
in academics, finishing high school with honors and entering
Columbia University at age 16. He went on to receive his
B.S. and M.S. degrees in mineral dressing in 1940 and 1941,
respectively.
George worked briefly for DuPont before becoming a
subleader team member on the Manhattan Project, where he
worked on pile heat transfer and fluid flow. He eventually
returned to DuPont, where his work on plastics, specifically
his patent on polytetrafluoroethylene suspensoids, made
commercial production of Teflon feasible at the time.
George began his academic career at Rose Polytechnic
Institute (now Rose-Hulman) as an assistant professor while
he commuted twice a week to simultaneously pursue his Ph.D.
at Purdue University, which he received in 1952. He became
7
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8 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
department chair at Rose before spending a year at the California
Institute of Technology as a National Science Foundation
fellow. In 1959 he became a faculty member at Northwestern
University.
During his 33 years at Northwestern, George conducted
research on a wide variety of topics in multiphase heat transfer
and fluid mechanics, many of which are related to nuclear reactor
safety, including bubble nucleation and growth in boiling, heat
conduction and diffusion with phase changes, vapor explosions,
and stability of thin liquid films under heating. He established
that surface cavities, rather than projections, were the sites for
bubble nucleation in boiling, and he developed the necessary
conditions for their stability. His variable-density single-fluid
model was the first to consider radial distribution effects in gas-
liquid flow and was the forerunner of the drift flux model.
He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering
in 1996 for his “contributions to the field of two-phase flow
and heat transfer and its application to nuclear-reactor
thermohydraulics.”
George published more than 200 papers and served as thesis
adviser to more than 70 graduate students. He took his research
around the world, as a visiting scientist at Technion (Israel
Institute of Technology) in Haifa, Israel; at CENG (Centre
d’Études Nucléaires de Grenoble), in France; and as a visiting
scholar at Imperial College in London. He was a member of
the U.S. team for the Japan-U.S. Seminar on Two-Phase Flow
Dynamics in Kobe, Japan, in 1979 and again in Kyoto in 1988.
George received many awards, including the Ernest W.
Thiele Award in 1999, the Heat Transfer and Energy Conversion
Division Award from the American Institute of Chemical
Engineers in 1995, and the Institute’s Robert E. Wilson Award
in Nuclear Chemical Engineering in 1994. He was also named
an Outstanding Chemical Engineer by Purdue University in
1993. In 1987 he was awarded the Max Jakob Memorial Award,
given in recognition of eminent achievement in the area of heat
transfer.
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S . GEORGE B A N K OFF 9
In addition, he was a fellow of the American Institute of
Chemical Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers, and the International Centre for Heat and Mass
Transfer, in Belgrade. He served as chairman of the advisory
committee of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Engineering
Technology Division, and as a member of the U.S.-USSR
Cooperative Program in Heat and Mass Transfer.
George’s children said that they first learned about their
father’s work in “boiling heat transfer” when they spent a
summer in Pasadena when he was working at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, but it was not until 10 years later that they learned
he had worked on the design of the reentry heat shield on the
Mercury space capsule. They also spent time with him at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory but again did not know that their
father was working on nuclear power.
In fact, nuclear power as an alternative energy source was
one of George’s passions. In a letter published in the Chicago
Tribune in November 1993, he wrote: “This nation cannot afford
to burden itself with high energy costs; too many jobs are lost as
a result. It is up to the media to initiate a realistic re-examination
of nuclear energy, which is, in fact, the least environmentally
damaging and most reliable of all energy sources.”
George Bankoff is survived by his wife, Elaine Bankoff; his
three children—Joseph Bankoff, Elizabeth Bankoff, and Jay
Bankoff; his six grandchildren; and a sister, Eleanor Stein.
