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EDWIN RICHARD GILLILAND
1909-1973
BY P. L. THIBAUT BRIAN
E DWIN RICHARD GILLILAND died suddenly on March 10,
1973, at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was Institute
Professor and Warren K. Lewis Professor of Chemical Engineering
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he had
shaped his career among the early builders of the chemical en-
gineering profession. Dr. Gilliland's inspirational teaching, imagi-
native research, authoritative writing, and administrative leader-
ship were acclaimed throughout MIT and throughout the chemical
engineering world. He was also a highly sought-after and very
successful industrial consultant and entrepreneur, and throughout
his professional life he gave generously and very effectively of his
talents in the service of his government. He was probably the most
able and the most renowned chemical engineer of his generation.
Ed Gilliland was born in E1 Reno, Oklahoma, on July 10, 1909.
When he was nine years old, his family moved to Little Rock,
Arkansas, where he lived until he entered the University of Illinois
to begin his career in chemical engineering. He graduated in 1930
with his Bachelor of Science degree and then went to Pennsylvania
State College where he obtained a Master of Science degree in
1931. From there he went to MIT, where he was to spend his entire
professional career except for a leave of absence to serve the U.S.
Government during World War II. His doctoral research, under
the direction of Professor Thomas K. Sherwood, was accomplished
in approximately eighteen months, and it developed the wetted-
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wall column technique that became widely used for studying mass
transfer phenomena. He received the Doctor of Science degree in
1933.
After receiving his doctorate, Dr. Gilliland worked briefly as an
assistant to Professor Sherwood, studying the drying of solids. He
was planning to leave MIT to accept employment with a major
industrial firm, but Professor Lewis was so impressed with him that
he urged him to remain. He decided to stay as an assistant to
Professor Lewis and began working on the mathematical analysis of
fractional distillation columns. This initiated his long and continu-
ing interest in the field of distillation, and his work in this field
propelled him at a very early age to the pinnacle of his profession.
Dr. Gilliland was appointed Instructor in 1934, Assistant Professor
in 1936, Associate Professor in 1939, and Professor of Chemical
Engineering in 1944. He was Head of the Department of Chemical
Engineering from 1961 to 1969. He was named Warren K. Lewis
Professor in 1969 and Institute Professor in 1971.
In 1934 Dr. Gilliland joined Professor Lewis as a consultant to
the Standard Oil Development Company (later Esso, and now
Exxon). That consulting relationship, which began when Dr. Gilli-
land was just twenty-five years old, grew and strengthened and
continued throughout his life. Stimulated by their consulting work
at Esso, Professors Lewis and Gilliland began experimenting at MIT
with fluidized beds of solid particles, and they are given much of
the credit for the development of the fluidized catalyst technique
for catalytic cracking of petroleum fractions. The process was very
important to the production of high-octane aviation gasoline dur-
ing World War II, and it has remained at the heart of world
petroleum technology and economics ever since.
In 1942 Dr. Gilliland went to Washington, D.C., where he was
Assistant Rubber Director in charge of research and development
for the War Production Board until 1944. Despite his administra-
tive duties, he devoted much of his energy to the solution of the
technical problems of producing synthetic rubber and made im-
portant contributions to the development of extractive distillation
techniques for the recovery of butadiene. He then became a
Member and Deputy Chief of Division 11, National Defense Re-
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search Committee, Of fire of Scientific Research and Development.
The following year he became Deputy Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Guided Missiles Committee, and a Member of the
Industrial Disarmament Committee. After the war and throughout
his life, Ed Gilliland continued to serve his government in many
important assignments, culminating in his appointment in 1961 to
serve four years on the President's Science Advisory Committee
under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
When Dr. Gilliland returned to MIT after the war, he resumed his
academic career as a thirty-five-year-old full Professor of Chemical
Engineering with a very bright future indeed. His research inter-
ests and professional publications, which had already ranged over
heat transfer, mass transfer, distillation, fluidization of solids,
polymerization kinetics, and high-pressure thermodynamics, con-
tinued to broaden. He had that very rare ability to penetrate deeply
into a field, master it, make unique and lasting original contribu-
tions that would inspire many workers to follow him for years, and
then to go to another field and repeat the process. He continued to
develop an understanding of the mechanics of fluidized beds of
solids, and he began research programs in electrochemistry, ion
exchange, and electrodialysis. He initiated~a series of fundamental
investigations into adsorption phenomena, developing a unique
understanding of the mobility of molecules in adsorbed layers. His
publications also included fundamental advances in heterogeneous
catalysis, properties of polymers, water desalination, and the rheol-
ogy of human blood. He became a coauthor in 1937 of the third
edition of the classic textbook Principles of Chemical Engineering, by
Walker, Lewis, McAdams, and Gilliland. In 1939 he collaborated
with C. S. Robinson on the third edition of Elements of Fractional
Distillation, a fourth edition of which was published in 1950.
Edwin Gilliland's work was highly acclaimed in the chemical
engineering profession. In 1944, at age thirty-five, he received the
Bakeland Medal and Award for Achievement in Chemistry, pre-
sented by the American Chemical Society (ACS). The ACS also
awarded him the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Award in
1959. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers (A~chE)
presented Dr. Gilliland the Professional Progress Award in Chemi-
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cal Engineering in 1950, the William H. Walker Award for out-
standing publications in 1954, the Warren K. Lewis Award in
Chemical Engineering Education in 1965, and the Founders
Award in 1971. He was elected a Fellow of Niche in 1971. North-
eastern University awarded him an honorary ' doctorate in 1948.
Dr. Gilliland was elected a Member of the National Academy of
Sciences (NAS) in 1948, where he served as Chairman of both the
Section of' engineering and of Class III from 1966 to 1969. He also
served the NAS on the Nominating Committee (1965-66) and the
Finance Committee (from 1966 until his death). He was elected a
Member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1965 and was
a Member of the Committee on the Patent System (1968-70) and
the Projects Committee (1968-71~. He was a Member of the Divi-
sion of Engineering of the National Research Council and a
Member of the Executive Committee (1969-73~.
Ed Gilliland was a highly successful industrial consultant who
derived great stimulation from the challenge of applying scientific
and engineering principles to the solution of the real problems of
the chemical industry. His consulting relationship with Exxon was
noted earlier. In 1946 he became a Member of the Board of
Advisors of the American Research and Development Company
(AR&D) and as such he became intimately involved in the affairs
of several high technology companies that were provided ven-
ture capital by AR&D. One of these was tonics, Inc., where Dr.
Gilliland served as President from its formation in 1946 until 1964
and then as Chairman of the Board from 1964 until he resigned, in
1971. This association with tonics kindled Gilliland's interest in
electrochemistry, ion exchange, and electrodialysis, and his teach-
ing and research programs at MIT in these areas stimulated a
generation of his students. This was typical of Ed Gilliland's total
professional involvement in a field. His academic research and
theoretical work contributed greatly to the solution of real indus-
trial problems, and the stimulation and challenge of the real
problems he encountered in his consulting work were carried back
to the classroom and to the research lab at MIT to stimulate and
challenge generations of his students.
Ed Gilliland developed a close association with Bradley Dewey
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when they worked together on the rubber program during the war,
and that relationship lasted throughout their lives. He served as a
consultant and a director of the Dewey and Almy Chemical Com-
pany, and, when Bradley Dewey later formed the Hampshire
Chemical Company, Gilliland served as a director of that company
too. Dr. Gilliland served as a consultant to Merck for more than
twenty-five years and to Deering Milliken for fifteen years. As
evidence of the strength of that latter consulting relationship,
Deering Milliken named their production plant at Laurens, South
Carolina, the Gilliland Plant. Gilliland developed a number of
other consulting relationships, most of them continuing over many
years, including Freeport Sulphur, Goodyear, General Electric Co.,
Halcon International, and Nestle.
In 1938 Ed Gilliland married Ann Frances Miller, and they had a
daughter, Gail, who is now Mrs. Grafton l. Corbett III. They made
their home for many years in Arlington, Massachusetts, and in later
years in Belmont. They also had a summer home on Cape Cod,
where Ed enjoyed sailing, motor-boating, and swimming. His other
hobbies were electronics—his basement was filled with television
sets he was building from war surplus spare parts and making
and repairing antique clocks. He seemed to get his greatest enjoy-
ment in life from the challenges of the intellect. He was an avid
reader on a wide variety of subjects, and he took great delight in a
debate on any subject from science to politics.
Ed Gilliland will long be remembered and sorely missed by his
many friends and colleagues and by four decades of students who
came to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study chemi-
cal engineering, many of whom were attracted there by the prom-
ise of studying under Edwin Richard Gilliland.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
professor lewis
