文档介绍：Chemical Engineering Science 56 (2001) 3627–3639
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Danckwerts Memorial Lecture
Chemical engineering and the postmodern world
J. M. Prausnitz ∗
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, and Chemical Sciences Division,
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Received 7 November 2000
I am grateful to the Institution of Chemical Engineers chemical engineering, it has e fashionable to use
for inviting me to present this year’s Danckwerts Lecture. an operational deÿnition, that is, to say that chemical en-
It is well known that a professor loves nothing more than gineering is what chemical engineers do. And what do
an audience. I am keenly aware of the deÿnition given by they do? At Berkeley, only a small fraction, perhaps 20%
the British-American poet, Auden, who said that while of our recent graduates, go to work in the conventional
many people talk in their sleep, a professor is someone chemical and petroleum industries. Most recent gradu-
who talks in other people’s sleep. ates, especially those with advanced degrees, ÿnd em-
Regrettably, I never met Professor Danckwerts but ployment in industries that either did not exist 10 or 20
early in my career, I became familiar with his pioneering years ago, or did not, until recently, discover the useful-
publications. During my graduate-student years at Prince- ness and relevance of chemical engineers in their opera-
ton, his publications were required reading, not only for tions. — But all that is well known and has been amply
courses but, more important, for passing Princeton’s se- discussed at technical meetings and in the professional
vere doctoral examination. Danckwerts’ work on mixing literature.
and on residence-time distributions was of direct use in My concerns about the future of our profession are
my . thesis concerning chemical-reactor design. Be- rooted in an undeniable fact that is all too often neglected:
cause I was much imp