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OCR for page 256
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OCR for page 257
JULIAN SZEKELY
1 934-1 995
BY WALTER S. OWEN
`lULIAN SZEKELY, one of the most distinguished founders of
modern materials engineering, cried in the Massachusetts In-
stitute of Technology (MIT) infirmary after a long and
courageous struggle with cancer on December 7, 1995. He was
sixty-one years old.
Born in Budapest, Julian was a student of engineering in
Hungar,v at the time of the uprising of October 1956. He es-
capecT and eventually reached London, England, where he
continued his studies and gracluated from Imperial College
with a B.Sc. degree in chemical engineering in 1959. He was
awarded a Ph.D. two years later. These academic achievements
become even more remarkable when it is realized that, in the
very short time available, he taught himself English to a level
that enabled him successfully to defenc! his thesis in a public
examination. Julian taught for a few years at Imperial College,
and it was while he was there that he met and married Joy
Pearn. In more than thirty years together, they raised a happy
and clevoted family, four boys and a girl, all of whom were
with Julian in his last days.
In 1966 Julian was appointed to the faculty of the
Department of Chemical Engineering at the State University
of New York at Buffalo. He became a citizen of the United
States in 1972. In 1975 he accepted an invitation to join the
faculty at MIT and happily spent his last twenty years at the
257
OCR for page 258
258
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
institute teaching courses in materials engineering, based in
large measure on the results of his own research and
experiences, en cl working with his graduate students and
research associates. His research group, which attracted many
senior researchers from other laboratories at home and
abroad, always included a half dozen or more of the brightest
graduate students at MIT.
Julian first became interested in steel through his associa-
tion with the BISRA research group at Imperial College and
his studies of mass, heat, and fluid flow in steel-making pro-
cesses continued and expander! throughout the three clecades
he spent in the United States. The computational modeling
techniques he developed to study en c! optimize these com-
plex, interactive, dynamic processes have had an important
influence on the design of modern iron and steel-making pro-
cesses from the blast furnace to the continuous caster. Today,
they are used in all major steel-making countries.
His interest in steel making soon lecl him to think about the
steed industry in a broader context at a time when a large
segment of the industry was being transformed from a small
number of integrated steel plants, built in the immediate
postwar period, to many smaller specialized units described as
mini-milIs. At the same time, the country was experiencing
the first of several oil crises, and environmental problems were
assuming ever-increasing importance. Julian devotecI much
effort to developing models of the energy consumption and
environmental impact of steel plants and the processes they
employ. His intense interest in these problems and issues was
first expressed publicly at the C. C. Furnas Memorial
Conferences of 1972, 1973, and 1975. The proceedings, edited
by Julian, were entitled, respectively, The Future of the World 's
Steel Industry, The Steel Industry and the Environment, and The
Steel Industry and the Energy Crisis. Julian's close association with
the steel inclustry continued throughout his years at MIT
through his contributions to many conferences, his
memberships on committees of the National Research
Council's National Materials Advisory Board, and his
consulting visits to steel companies in the United States,
OCR for page 259
JULIAN SZEKELY
259
Europe, and Japan. His continuing study and analysis of the
problems of the worId's steel industries culminated in what he
described as "A Top Executive Steel Summit," held in Mattsee,
Austria, only four months before he died, at which he made a
major contribution to discussions exploring future directions
that the industry might take.
At the same time as he was modeling and studying the big
picture, he continued to study critical components of inclivid-
ual processes. One of the most important of these was the
modeling of the swirling flow in the nozzles of continuous
casters, a subject on which he published a number of papers
in recent years. This, like much of his work, has had a major
influence on the direction of research in Japan and Europe as
well as in the United States.
Julian's enthusiasm for his work was tireless, his range of
interests unlimited, and his output prodigious. The list of his
most recent publications illustrates the amazing breadth and
depth of his research interests. In 1994 alone he published
twenty-eight papers, most of them the result of penetrating
studies in materials processing using computational numeri-
cal methods. They include papers about the role of turbulence
in weld pool behavior, mathematical models of arc welding
processes, ferrosilicon production in a plasma arc furnace,
and optimization of casting design. But, as always, in a few
papers he set out his always-stimulating and often controver-
sial views on everything from the future of the global steel
industry to the shortcomings of engineering education.
Earlier, he had studied metal spray deposition processes
anct this led him to consider the difficult problem of the influ-
ences of surface stress and internal fluid! flow on the size and
shape of an isolates! droplet in gravitational and magnetic
fields. This was not a new problem but, by the imaginative
application of numerical, finite element techniques, Julian
found a way forward that has produced some elegant answers
and, in his hands, has proved to be a powerful research tool
for the study of related phenomena in soldering and other
metal deposition processes.
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260
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
In recent years he became interested in problems of elec-
tronic materials and macle important contributions to our
understanding of chemical vapor deposition and the growth
of single crystals. [t is not surprising that he should direct his
attention to the potential for processes using electromagnetic
stirring or electrostatic and magnetic levitation to produce
new or improved electronic materials. These interests lecl, in
turn, to studies of gravitational effects and, inevitably, to mi-
crogravitational processing. More than two clecacles of study
of earthbound processing uniquely prepared him to enter the
space age, and he seized the challenge with his unusual, un-
quenchable enthusiasm. He was a major contributor to the
design of the experiment involving crystal growth in micro-
gravity, clevised by various American and German universities,
which was flown in 1995 by NASA. This work is continuing,
and a further experiment will be flown in 1997.
In total he, together with colleagues and students, was
awarder! eight patents and publishecl more than four hun
, . · · ~- ~ ~ 1 1 · 1 _ _1 ~ ~ ~ _ _ 1 ~ _ ~ ~ ^1~ ~
tired scenic papers. me puo~snea tour OOOKS, tIll~ Oi Lll~}
with colleagues, and editecI eight books of conference pro-
ceeclings. His books Fluid Flow Aspects of Metal Processing,
Optimization in Process Metallurgy (with W. H. Ray), en cl Rate
Phenomena in Process Metallurgy (with N. J. Themelis) are wicle-
ly used stanciard texts. In all this he hacI the loyal and
enthusiastic support of the many students and associates who
gathered around him at MIT; who were taught and inspired
by him; and who continued his work in countries throughout
the industrialized worIcl. -~ ~
His teaching style, although some-
times unconventional, was always stimulating. He taught
students to concern themselves only with demonstrable facts
and quantitative arguments. He was a demancling supervisor
and collaborator who inspired loyalty and respect in full mea-
sure. Julian always emphasized the importance of the
contributions of all the members of his research team. His
name stands alone only on publications in which he expounds
his personal view of some global problem; all the others carry
the names of those involved in the study. Some papers have as
many as five authors.
OCR for page 261
JULIAN SZEKELY
261
Julian was elected to the National Academy of Engineering
in 1982. His remarkable career and achievements were
recognized also by many awards en cl honors bestowal by
learned societies and organizations in many different
countries. Some gave him the opportunity to astound his
friends by his amazing ability to master foreign languages. It
was perhaps not too surprising that he shouIc] respond to an
award from the Max Planck Institute in flawless German or to
the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble in excellent
French, but that, in 1992, he aciciressed the Japanese
Engineering Academy for more than an hour in fluent
Japanese is surely a truly remarkable achievement. He spent a
sabbatical in Japan where he had many friends, some of whom
hac3 studied with him in the United States, ant! he gave much
thought to ways in which the close collaborations that exist
between institutions in the two countries could be further
strengthened and enriched. His horizon was not bounded by
geography and in the last few years he was building
collaborations with groups in China and South Arr~erica, two
places that presented him with more linguistic challenges.
A few sentences extracted from the resolution of the faculty
of MTT on the death of Julian Szekely capture much of the
personality of the man: 'Julian was a man of boundless ener-
gy. He loved a vigorous game of tennis or squash as much as
he enjoyec! a spiritual conversation. TndeecI, he could often be
seen in the 'infinite corridor' with a student or colleague in-
volvecI in animated discussion on a vast range of educational,
technical, sociological, or political topics. He was a mentor of
minority students en c! took special pricle in their achieve-
ments." To that I can only add that he was a most
clistinguishec! scholar, and engineer, an enjoyable and valued
friend, and a good man.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
imperial college
