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OCR for page 173
LEON LAPIDUS
1924-1977
BY NEAL R. AMUNDSON
LEON LAPIDUS, Chairman of the Department of Chemical En-
gineering, Princeton University, died suddenly in his office on
Thursday, May 5, 1977. He was fifty-two years old. His death came
as a great surprise and shock to his many friends and colleagues,
both in the chemical and computer industry, as well as in the
academic world, where he was widely known for his research,
extensive writings over a wide area, and as an excellent teacher and
superb mentor of a series of excellent students. He had joined
Princeton University first in 1951 as a Research Associate and
became Head of the Chemical Engineering Department in 1968,
succeeding the late Richard H. Wilhelm.
Leon Lapidus was born in Syracuse, New York, on September
26, 1924, and received the bachelor's and master's degrees from
Syracuse University, the latter in 1947. He attended the University
of Minnesota and received his doctorate in chemical engineering in
1950, being one of the rarities of modern times, a three-year Ph.D.
degree recipient. Leon was a graduate student who worked consist-
ently and constantly, but whose outward appearance was not one
of compulsion. He coauthored three papers before he received the
doctorate. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology for one year, following which he went to the
Forrestal Laboratory at Princeton, where he worked under Profes-
sor Richard H. Wilhelm on the chemical kinetics of the water-gas
shift reaction, a reaction which at the present time is again receiv-
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OCR for page 174
ing a great deal of attention. He became an Assistant Professor in
1953 and a full Professor in 1962 and was elected to the National
Academy of Engineering in 1976. He was recognized in 1970 by
Princeton University, when it appointed him Class of 1943 Univer-
sity Professor of Chemical Engineering.
Dr. Lapidus early in his career became interested in the more
theoretical aspects of chemical engineering and was one of the
early workers who used the modern digital computer in his re-
search. His main thrust in research, after an early foray into
transient phenomena, liquid-liquid fluidized systems, and
theoretical analysis of various unit operations, was in the field of
control and optimization applied to chemical reactions coupled
with heat and mass transport in chemical reactors. He was one of
the first to apply Lyapunov functionals to distributed parameter
systems, particularly tubular and stirred pot reactors, and his inter-
est and work in nonlinear control initiated much of the work of
others. He worked on process identification, adaptive control,
time-optimal control, filtering, and, in general, applied all of the
techniques now commonly used before they were so.
In the recent past, probably because of his close association with
IBM for a number of years, he became interested in efficient and
accurate methods of computation for a variety of problems in
chemical engineering. He developed means for handling stiff
systems and applied these to a wide variety of chemical reactor
problems. In fact, from 1965 to 1977 he published over 100 papers
and at the time of his death had ten major works in press, two of
these being books, one of which was published the day after his
death. Prior to his death he had developed some new numerical
techniques about which he was very excited. He had presented
these in January 1977 at a seminar at the University of Minnesota
and appeared to be in robust good health. These techniques were
remarkably simple and accurate, and hopefully they will appear
posthumously. In 1962 he authored "Digital Computation for
Chemical Engineers," followed by "Optimal Control of Chemical
Processes" in 1967, "Numerical Solution of Ordinary Differential
Equations" in 1971, and "Mathematical Methods in Chemical
Engineering Volume III: Process Modeling, Estimation, and
174
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Identification" in 1974. He coedited a memorial volume for
Richard H. Wilhelm on Chemical Reactor Theory in 1977 and had just
finished "Numerical Solution of Partial Differential Equations.',
Dr. Lapidus had been honored by the American Institute of
Chemical Engineers with the William H. Walker Award for re-
search and with its Professional Progress Award. He had been
Chemical Engineering Lecturer for the American Society of En-
gineering Education and had been a Member of the American
Chemical Society and the American Institute of Chemical En-
gineers. He was widely sought after as a consultant and did so for
Shell, Exxon, IBM, Cities Service, Humble, and others. He had
always been in great demand as a seminar lecturer and as a
symposium leader.
Leon Lapidus was married to Elizabeth Kalmes, of Rolling Stone,
Minnesota, and had a son, Jon Jay, and a daughter, Mary Kalmes.
He is survived by his sister Mrs. Florence Goldman of New York
City. In addition to his many professional activities, he was an active
and excellent lawn tennis player and at his death was President of
the New Jersey Tennis Association.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
chemical engineers
