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MERRELL ROBERT FENSKE
1904-1971
BY NUNZI0 I. PALLADINO
THE PROFESSION of engineering and the Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity lost a special friend and proponent with the death of
Merrell Fenske, who was born on`~une 5, 1904, and who died on
September 28, 1971.
Most of Merrell Fenske's friends and associates were familiar
with his accomplishments. What his formal biography does not,
and can not, speak of' was Merrell Fenske's contributions to the lives
of his students and associates, as well as his contributions to his
profession, which extended far beyond the mere reciting of publi-
cations, patents, honorary society memberships, and technical soci-
ety memberships with the rank of Fellow.
Professor Fenske was educated at DePauw University and the
Massachusetts Institute ol' Technology. In 1928 he received the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the latter, where he had
worked with P. K. Frolich on catalysts for the formation of
methanol from carbon monoxide. He went to the Pennsylvania
State University shortly thereafter as an Assistant Professor and in
due course became that rare combination of Professor of' Chemis-
try and Professor of Chemical Engineering.
In 1929 he was made Director of the Petroleum Refining Labo-
ratory, and his early work was devoted to research for the Pennsyl-
vania Grade Crude Oil Association. From this, three major re-
search interests developed separations, hydrocarbon chemistry,
and lubrication. It was while studying the compositions of Pennsyl-
vania crudes that he built the first fractionating columns with 100
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and more theoretical plates and also developed the classical equa-
tion that bears his name for columns operating under total reflux.
His work on the composition of Pennsylvania gasoline constituted
pioneering studies in which the individual compounds were iden-
tified and separated, and his equipment and techniques opened up
the field for similar studies at other laboratories. The research
aided materially in the design of commercial installations for the
production of high performance aircraft fuels in World War II.
Distillation was a separation by molecular size, and Professor
Fenske needed a more powerful means for separating the con-
stituents of Pennsylvania crudes the separation by molecular
type. He and his associates turned to liquid extraction and elevated
that process from an underdeveloped art to a useful unit operation
by the development of techniques, equipment, calculation
methods, and understanding. He was also responsible later for a
similar development in the area of extractive distillation. His re-
search in liquid extraction was applied by him in devising processes
and apparatus for metal separations and purifications in the Man-
hattan Project (now Atomic Energy Commission).
Merrell Fenske's undergraduate training was in chemistry, and
chemistry was most dear to him. His early work was on the catalytic
formation of alcohols from carbon monoxide and hydrogen, later
on the oxidation of Pennsylvania kerosenes, pure hydrocarbons,
naphthas, and hydrocarbon gases. From these studies evolved
many additional studies on the chemistry of oxidation and the
chemistry of the oxidation products.
Work on Pennsylvania crudes could hardly have been conducted
without touching on the preparation of lubricants. Fenske's early
development, with Professor Cannon, of the viscometer that bears
their names revolutionized viscosity measurement and specification
in the petroleum industry. Later he was instrumental in the de-
velopment of new hydraulic fluids, recoil oils, and lubricants for
the Air Force, Navy, and Army. He standardized the specifications
and helped in the initiation of the commercial production of these
fluids in World War II. Today these materials are used by all
services in aircraft, missiles, and in land and water ordnance. He
also devised and obtained commercial production of jet engine
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lubricants for military aircraft and for the hydraulic systems of
missiles and new supersonic aircraft.
During the forty years that Professor Fenske carried out and
directed work on the science of petroleum refining and the applica-
tion of fundamental knowledge to the practical problems of
technology, he and his colleagues and students produced and
published a truly remarkable volume of important work, both on
theory and practice. Noted were distillation, viscosity and rheology,
and oxidation, but the list extends far beyond this to ther-
modynamics, phase equilibria, hydrogenation, catalysis, refining
processes, Raman spectra, heat pumps, fluidization of particulate
solids, microorganisms and their behavior, fuels, analytical
methods, and many more.
With a vigor and a breadth of interest that seem amazing,
Professor Fenske's work touched an almost unbelievable spectrum
of engineering problems. As a research director he was without
peer. He was amazingly creative and could keep a wide variety of
projects going. The key to the vast number of achievements was
undoubtedly his capacity for continued hard work. And he ex-
pected a comparable diligence from his students and colleagues.
He was never a forty-hour-a-week engineer, nor did he expect as
little from his associates.
Those of us who worked with him will always remember his
ability to get to the heart of a problem. If it involved research, he
could identify the important factors. If it were a conference, he
could sum up the important facts, bring the discussion back from
irrelevances to the basic problem, and put it on a straight course
again.
His lasting claim to public recognition undoubtedly lies in his
research work, an area we can evaluate with statistics numbers of
publications, patents, and other tangible evidences of a productive
professional life. But foremost, Merrell Fenske was a teacher. He
taught in the classroom for only a little more than a dozen years,
but in that time he developed a reputation for his clarity of
presentation, his stress of fundamentals, and his emphasis on true
understanding of the subject matter. His later students knew him
only outside the classroom as their research director or as a
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member of their thesis committee. But every contact they had with
him was a real educational exercise. He professed in the very best
tradition of the true professor.
Merrell Fenske's colleagues will long remember him as a strong
stimulus. His comments were always direct, his evaluations reliable,
and his advice dependable. The entire engineering community has
lost a true friend and faithful worker in its behalf;
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
pennsylvania crudes
