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Van Ness Award Lectures

Hendrick Van Ness

The Van Ness Award is made in recognition of the achievements of the late H.C. Van Ness, Institute Professor Emeritus at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. It is presented annually to honor a chemical engineer who has made seminal contributions to the profession. The Van Ness Award Lecture Series is sponsored by a generous endowment from Edward ’62 and Nancy Feltham.

Professor Van Ness received his B.S. and M.S. Degrees from the University of Rochester, where he was also an instructor for two years. After another two years with the M.W. Kellogg Company, he attended Yale University and received a D. Eng. in 1953. Following four years as an Assistant Professor at Purdue University, he came to Rensselaer in 1956. He was a Visiting Professor at Kings College, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the University of California, Berkeley, and at Danmarks Tekniske Hojskole, Lyngby, Denmark.

Professor Van Ness and his students devised experimental methods that have served as prototypes for world-wide application in accurate and rapid measurement of primary physical properties. They also developed efficient techniques for data reduction that are fundamental to the correlation and generalization of thermodynamic properties for application to chemical process design. In recognition of his significant achievements, Professor Van Ness was named a Fellow of the AIChE, received the 1988 W.K. Lewis Award (AIChE), and was named the IUPAC Rossini Lecturer in 1994. 

Professor Van Ness made significant contributions to the literature of chemical thermodynamics that reflect his interest in experiments.  He is well-known for Introduction to Chemical-Engineering Thermodynamics, the most widely used chemical engineering textbook of all time. The seventh edition, with coauthors J.M. Smith and M.M. Abbott, was published in 2005. This book has served as a standard text for undergraduates for 55 years. Read Extended Biographical Sketch of Hendrick C. Van Ness.

 

Lecture Series

Samira Azarin, University of Minnesota
Academy Hall Auditorium, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Ying Diao, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ricketts 203, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Ryan Lively, Georgia Institute of Technology
Online via WebEx: https://rensselaer.webex.com/rensselaer/onstage/g.php?MTID=ed16d4b32bc5ed655723c5dcbdad6d141
Amish Patel, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, University of Pennsylvania
CBIS Howard P. Isermann Auditorium, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Amish Patel, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, University of Pennsylvania
Ricketts 203, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Matthew Helgeson, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara
Ricketts 211, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Previous Lectures in the Vann Ness Award Lecture Series

Awardee and affiliation at the time of award

2015 Chinedum Osuji, Yale University

2014 Christopher Love, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2013 Daeyeon Lee, University of Pennsylvania

2012 Kristala Prather, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2011 Hang Lu, Georgia Institute of Technology

2010 Abraham Stroock, Cornell University

2009 Rachel A. Segalman, University of California, Berkeley

2008 Patrick S. Doyle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

2007 Thomas M. Truskett, University of Texas, Austin

2006 Michael Tsapatsis, University of Minnesota

2005 David Schaffer, University of California, Berkeley

2004 Samir Mitragotri, University of California, Santa Barbara

2003 George Georgiou, University of Texas, Austin

2002 Nicholas L. Abbott, University of Wisconsin, Madison

2001 Eric S.G. Shaqfeh, Stanford University

2000 Karen K. Gleason, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1999 James B. Rawlings, University of Wisconsin, Madison

1998 Nitash Balsara, Polytechnic University of New York

1997 T. Kyle Vanderlick, Princeton University

1996 Buddy D. Ratner, University of Washington

1995 Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos, Cornell University

1994 Frances H. Arnold, California Institute of Technology

1993 Eduardo D. Glandt, University of Pennsylvania

1992 William J. Koros, University of Texas, Austin

1991 H.C. Van Ness, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Joe M. smith, University of California, Davis

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