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OCR for page 177
WARREN KENDALL LEWIS
1882-1975
BY HOYT C. HOTTEL
WARREN K LEWIS who died on March 9, 1975, has been called
the father of chemical engineering, America's number-one
chemical engineer. Though his contributions both to education and
to the chemical industry during a life of ninety-three years were
many and solid, his hallmark was stimulation of hard thinking
in others. Attack from the head and not the heart was Lewis'
characteristic most remembered by his associates of two genera-
tions. "Doe" could bring to the solution of a problem, whether
industrial or educational, a sound knowledge of physics and
physical chemistry. That knowledge was well organized, his
capacity for expression was superb, and his dedication to the
objective of finding the answer was obvious and intense. In any
discussion he loved to lecture to students, to researchers, to
industrial planners, to anyone.
Born on a farm in Laurel, Delaware, on August 21, 1882, Lewis
transferred in his high school days to Newton, Massachusetts, for
better schooling, and in 1901 he entered the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology (MIT) and began his association with Dr. Wil-
liam H. Walker, Head of Chemical Engineering. On graduation he
was awarded a fellowship for study in physical chemistry in Bres-
lau, and, after receiving his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1908,
he returned to MIT as a Research Associate in Applied Chemistry.
For one year he was a chemist for a tannery in New Hampshire, then
returned to MIT as Assistant Professor in 1910. Having become a
full Professor under Dr. Walker in 1914, Lewis was made head of
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MIT'S Department of Chemical Engineering in 1920 when, after
thirty-two years, it was finally separated from the Chemistry De-
partment.
Dr. Lewis early recognized the need for a more unifying philos-
ophy of education in chemical engineering and, stimulated by
Arthur D. Little, worked with Walker and McAdams in identifying
and quantifying what were called the unit operations of chemical
industry distillation, heat transfer, fluid flow, absorption, and so
forth. In 1923 this effort produced the classic Principles of Chemical
~ . .
Engineering.
Dr. Lewis' other two books reflected his interest in chemical
engineering education, and on applications to industrial problems.
He considered combustion one of the unit operations, especially
valuable in showing the student how much insight on industrial
problems can be contributed by energy balances and by material
balances on single chemical species. This led to publication in 1926
of a book with Radasch, Industrial Stoichiometry.
From concern with unit operations, Dr. Lewis turned to an
emphasis on industrial chemical processes involving mac-
romolecules, particularly in the areas of leather, paper, rubber,
clay, textiles, and plastics. The result was a book with Squires and
Broughton, The Industrial Chemistry of Colloidal and Amorphous Mate-
rials.
Dr. Lewis never failed to emphasize to his students the impor-
tance of their being able to recognize the implications to chemical
industry of what they knew, and his best instruction was by exam-
ple. His contributions to industry were many. A few of them follow:
Recognition of some of the implications of the alcohol industry's
know-how to the oil industry, including an early improvement in
vacuum distillation of lubricating oils; responsibility for the first
large-scale application of continuous rectification in the petroleum
industry; the upgrading of shell stills by superimposing rectifying
columns; contributions to improved quantification of multicompo-
nent distillation.
In the rubber industry, contributions to the structure of mac-
romolecules and to improved understanding of the kinetics of
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vulcanization; a course of instruction to a rubber research group on
applied physical chemistry.
Major aid in bringing coke deposition in thermal cracking of
petroleum under control, through identification of the kinetics of
thermal cracking. He recognized the importance of eliminating
hold-up in processing equipment, of allowing for the contribution,
to the deposition of coke, of higher-than-first-order polymerization
processes occurring in two-phase flow.
In oil-f~eld recovery problems, work on two-phase flow through
porous media, on high-pressure ~v-T relations for hydrocarbons,
on interphase equilibrium constants.
Fluidized-bed catalytic cracking. Dr. Lewis was a pioneer in the
study of fluidization of comminuted solids, in the application of
fluidization to catalytic cracking, a process replacing fixed-bed
operation in which loss of catalyst activity through carbon deposi-
tion and difficulty in temperature control during regeneration by
carbon burn-off had been major problems. The present capital
investment in fluidized-bed processes is in billions of dollars.
Space has not permitted adequate elaboration of these few of
many contributions made by Dr. Lewis to chemical industry. His
performance both as an educator and as a practicing engineer was
recognized by many honors and awards, listed here:
Honorary Doctorate Degrees University of Delaware, Princeton
University, Harvard University, Bowdoin College
President's Medal of Merit
President's Medal of Science
Perkins Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry
Lamme Medal of ASEE
Establishment of ATChE'S Warren K. Lewis Award
Priestly Medal of the American Chemical Society
Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemists
New England Award of the Engineering Societies of New England
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Award of the ACS
American Petroleum Institute Gold Medal for Distinguished
Achievement
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Founder's Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers
John Fritz Medal of five national engineering societies
Establishment at MIT of the Warren K. Lewis Professorship in
Chemical Engineering
Warren Kendal Lewis would have been proud to know that by
now twenty-seven of his former students have become members of
the National Academy of Engineering. Perhaps the best closing
tribute to him is a quote from an article written, when he was still
vigorous at eighty-eight, by his former student he admired most,
Edwin R. Gilliland:
The characteristics that made Dr. Lewis outstanding as a teacher and
builder of men were a tireless devotion to his work and to his ideals, a rare
form of modesty in giving credit to others, sympathy for the man who
made an effort (excellence preferred, but the effort was paramount), a
wonderful enthusiasm for his profession and for tackling the tough
problems, for making chemical engineering practice a vivid and colorful
experience, and a knack for teaching and for inspiring the best in his
students and associates.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
kendal lewis
