Warren Rohsenow

Warren Max Rohsenow was a researcher and professor of mechanical engineering. 

He was born in Chicago on February 12, 1921, he lived in Fort Worth and Kansas City prior to moving back to Chicago and entering college. Attending various schools, he became an accomplished musician - particularly drums and piano - participating in many dance bands and orchestras. While he was heavily involved with accelerated academics, music, clubs, and sports, he still found time to earn his Eagle Scout badge before he graduated from high school at age 16.

Attending Northwestern University, he received the B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1941. Of course, he continued to make music with the orchestra and marching band, filling in with anything that was needed, as well as many professional gigs. Continuing in mechanical engineering at Yale University, he earned an M.A. in 1943 and rapidly completed the requirements for the D.Eng., which was awarded in 1944. He was an instructor during his graduate program, teaching mechanics, thermodynamics, and heat-power engineering. Receiving a commission in the US Navy after graduating from Yale, he served with the gas turbine division of the Naval Engineering Experiment Station developing temperature instrumentation for a domestically produced gas turbine considered for ship propulsion. He wrote one of his early papers on thermocouple error when measuring hot gas temperatures. A few other engineering problems related to the war effort occupied his attention during his two-year active service

He joined the M.I.T. faculty in 1946, working in the Heat Measurements Laboratory and teaching undergraduate thermodynamics and heat transfer, as well as developing the first graduate courses in heat transfer at the Institute. He published papers on improving gas turbine regenerators and began an extensive research effort on boiling heat transfer initially sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. The latter work focused on forced convection subcooled boiling, covering the entire range of heat fluxes including burnout. This program led to the installation of two 36-kW motor-generators for direct-resistance heating of the test tubes. To avoid physical destruction of the tubes, a dynamite- cap switch was developed to interrupt the current as the tube temperature rapidly increased at the initiation of burnout. The dynamite switch was lost in the mists of time, but the motor-generators were used by many students during the next 60 years. A laboratory report series was initiated in 1950 to facilitate rapid dissemination of research results, and a steady stream of papers appeared in conference proceedings and in research journals. He was co-author of the first report (1950) and the last report, Number 106 (1990).

His most important paper started out in report form in 1951: "A Method of Correlating Heat Transfer Data for Surface Boiling of Liquids." The proposed method was simple but effective: The boiling curve for forced convection subcooled (surface) boiling was considered a superposition of single-phase forced convection and nucleate pool boiling. The pool boiling component obtained by subtraction was then correlated by dimensionless groups. The exponent of each group was found to be approximately the same for many liquids, leaving only to be determined the lead constant, Csf, which depends on surface and fluid. In the past 50 years, many researchers have used this general approach. This paper earned him the ASME Junior Award in 1952 and the ASME Classic Paper Award in 2002. To testify to the staying power of this approach, he was co-author of two related papers in IJHMT (2004).

The laboratory was renamed the Heat Transfer Laboratory in 1956, with him as director. A wide variety of additional studies of very complex phenomena was undertaken: boiling and condensing of liquid metals, forced convection film boiling, thermal contact resistance, condensation of refrigerants, improvement of cooling towers, enhancement of heat transfer, and heat transfer in underground electrical cables. He was an author on over 100 journal papers as well as several hundred conference papers, book chapters, and technical reports.

For many years, he headed the Thermal Science Division of the M.I.T. Department of Mechanical Engineering. He was largely responsible for developing the graduate program in heat transfer, which was highlighted by his courses in conduction and convection heat transfer. He had a much broader responsibility, serving as Graduate Officer of the department for nearly 30 years. His research and teaching experience led to the 1961 textbook Heat, Mass and Momentum Transfer, co-authored with H.Y. Choi. This was one of the first undergraduate heat transfer textbooks written. The book was used for many years in undergraduate and intermediate heat transfer courses at M.I.T. He was senior editor and contributor to the definitive Handbook of Heat Transfer (1973), its two-volume successor, Handbook of Heat Transfer Fundamentals and Handbook of Heat Transfer Applications (1985), and the 3rd edition Handbook of Heat Transfer (1998). He also edited Developments in Heat Transfer (1964). The typical handbook chapter summarized the fundamentals and gave a comprehensive list of formulas that could be used in practice to estimate heat transfer coefficients. In 1960, he organized a two-week intensive summer course, "Developments in Heat Transfer," which was offered for the next 16 years.

His research work primarily involved graduate students working toward their degrees, and he supervised over 150 graduate theses in Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear Engineering, and Ocean Engineering. He was "Doctor Father" to over 40 students, half of whom have assumed professorships at leading universities, assuring that he had many "Technical Grandchildren" and even "Technical Great-Grandchildren."

A member of ASME since 1943, he served as chairman of the Boston section (1955-56) and was chairman of the Heat Transfer Division (1961-62). He was an early proponent of the International Heat Transfer Conferences, now held regularly every four years. He was a founder of the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer (originally in Yugoslavia, now headquartered in Turkey), serving as Vice president and President. He was a founding member of the Editorial Advisory board of IJHMT, and served on the advisory boards of several other journals. He was a member of delegations establishing cooperative programs with other countries, notably the US-USSR Cooperative Agreement in Heat and Mass Transfer (1979).

Besides being an outstanding leader in heat transfer and thermal power research and education, he had a deep insight into engineering challenges and technology development. He consulted for many major corporations, including courtroom appearances. In 1957, he co-founded, with J.P. Barger, Dynatech Corporation (initially Microtech Research) in Cambridge, MA. He served as Chairman of the Board of Directors. The consulting and manufacturing company grew to 3000 employees worldwide and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, before it was sold in 1997.

His accomplishments were recognized with major professional society awards: Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal (1951), ASME Junior Award (1952), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1956), ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award (1967), ASME Fellow (1968), AIChE and ASME Max Jakob Memorial Award (1970), US National Academy of Engineering (1975), ASME Centennial Medallion (1980), ASME Honorary Member 1988, and ASME Medal (2001). In 1997, the ASME Gas Turbine Committee of the Heat Transfer Division awarded the first Warren M. Rohsenow Prize for the best conference presentation. In 2004, the first ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator in Heat Transfer was recognized.

He retired from M.I.T. in 1985

He passed away on June 3, 2011 at the age of 90.