Chemical Engineering History - 1902 to 1970

by Rutherford Aris and L. E. Scriven

Minnesota's first four graduates in chemistry received the degree of Ch.E. in 1897, notwithstanding that they took no course in chemical engineering and were taught by no one called chemical engineer. The degree had been established in 1892; the first enrollee, Grace Sylvia Burk, did not complete the course. Then the degree disappeared for 20 years, although industrial and technical chemistry courses continued to be prominent in the chemistry curricula. Mirroring the bubbling ferment in chemistry nationwide, by 1914 a School of Chemistry had evolved that consisted of a Technical Division and an Industrial division along with Inorganic, Analytical, Organic and Physical Divisions. Teaching assistants and instructors as well as professors were expected to engage in research. In the war years the degrees of B.S. in Ch.E. and Ch.E. for applied chemistry graduates reappeared but chemical engineering did not emerge until the first chemical engineer was added to the faculty. That was in the postwar reorganization of the School of Chemistry in 1919, on the brink of swelling enrollments.

Charles A. Mann, who held an early Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Wisconsin and had been teaching chemical engineering at Iowa State University, no more arrived than was promoted to the rank of Professor and made Acting Head of the newly constituted Division of Chemical Engineering. Its quarters were initially somewhat inadequate and the experimental side of chemical engineering could not be put into operation until the fourth wing of the Chemistry building was completed. Twenty years later, the department was still in the bowels of the Chemistry building, George Montillon and Ralph Montanna had joined Charles Mann as the three chemical engineering professors, Marvin Rogers and Arthur Stoppel were assistant professors and Cornelius Grove and Edgar Piret instructors. B.F. Ruth of filtration fame had been on the faculty and Neal Amundson and George Piercy had graduated and gone to work for the company which is now Exxon, one to rise to a Vice-Presidency and the other to return to Minnesota. Indeed thirty years after the department was founded and just after the death of Charles Mann, Amundson (recently attracted back from the Mathematics Department) was Associate Professor, Norman Ceaglske, Arthur Stoppel and Edgar Piret were of full rank, and Richard Stevenson, George Preckshot, and Arthur Madden were assistant professors in a department of seven faculty.

Between 1949 to 1951, Neal Amundson was first Acting Chairman and then Acting Head of the Department while a search for a head from the outside was underway. The search was unsuccessful, and so the then Dean, Athelstan Spilhaus, appointed Amundson to Head of the Department. In 1949 the faculty consisted of Amundson, Ceaglske, Madden, Piret, Preckshot, Stephenson and Stoppel. In addition there were two instructors, 12 teaching assistants, 1 machinist and 1 secretary. The annual budget was $80,363.

In August of 1950, the Department moved from the basement of the Chemistry building into the new building which now constitutes the east end of Amundson Hall. It was during the period 1950 to 1970 that Amundson built the Department into an internationally recognized leader in chemical engineering education and research. The faculty in 1970 consisted of Amundson, Aris, Carr, Ceaglske, Davis, Dahler, Fredrickson, Isbin, Keller, Ranz, Schmidt, Scriven and Tsuchiya. Reaction engineering, transport processes, rheology and fluid mechanics, nuclear engineering, and biochemical and biomedical engineering were areas of active research. The emphasis was on the fundamental understanding of they physical and chemical mechanisms controlling chemical engineering processes. The luster of Amundson's and Aris's theoretical work was soon matched by experimental and theoretical contributions in all these areas. Great weight was put on teaching, and the team-teaching of undergraduate courses helped meld the interdisciplinary talents of the faculty. By 1970 the graduate student body in chemical engineering typically numbered about 80 and the number of BS degrees awarded was about 50. The careers of most alumni, undergraduate and graduate, have been in industry and commerce. Nevertheless, the totality of those in academica is remarkable. Already by 1933 Minnesota's graduate program was tied for second as a supplier of chemical engineering faculty in the U.S. Today it probably ranks first or second.