34 Facts About Rutherford Aris

Rutherford "Gus" Aris was a chemical engineer, control theorist, applied mathematician, and a regents professor emeritus of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Rutherford Aris's father owned a photo-finishing works, where he would experiment with chemicals and reactions.

Rutherford Aris attended St Martin's, a small local kindergarten and moved to St Wulfran's, a local preparatory school, now Queen Elizabeth's School.

Piggot spent substantial time on pure and applied mathematical papers, an experience that Rutherford Aris described as "extraordinary".

Rutherford Aris dedicated his book Discrete Dynamic Programming to Piggot 15 years later.

Piggot helped Rutherford Aris to get a job working for Imperial Chemical Industries as a laboratory technician in the Mechanical Engineering Department of the Research Labs, at the age of 17.

Rutherford Aris sat 12 papers covering a wide range of mathematical topics, and got a degree with first-class honours.

Rutherford Aris, who was accepted for post-graduate studies but not for a Ph.

Rutherford Aris was then promoted to Technical Officer, where he began working on chromatography.

Rutherford Aris utilized results from a paper on dispersion written by Geoffrey Taylor, and extended its results, ultimately writing a paper in 1955 that applied the method of moments to Taylor's approach.

Rutherford Aris submitted the paper to the Proceedings of the Royal Society, with help from Taylor.

Amundson suggested to ICI, during his visit, that Rutherford Aris be sent to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for a year of study.

Several months later, Rutherford Aris later met Amundson at Cambridge and told Amundson of his plans to leave ICI for academia, plans that he had not revealed to his superiors at ICI.

Rutherford Aris began working on chemically reacting laminar flow, applying Kummer's hypergeometric function to the problem, and control of a stirred tank reactor with some unusual properties.

Rutherford Aris took advantage of the opportunity, and left immediately for Edinburgh.

Rutherford Aris attended the lectures of, and interacted with, the chair of chemical technology at the University of Edinburgh, Kenneth Denbigh, who was a well-known thermodynamicist and an editor of the journal Chemical Engineering Science.

Rutherford Aris returned to Minneapolis in the summer of 1957 to continue his work on the stirred tank reactor problem.

Rutherford Aris accepted the job, and began working as an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota in 1958.

Amundson had suggested Rutherford Aris look into Richard Bellman's method of dynamic programming for his dissertation.

Rutherford Aris's dissertation was published by the Academic Press in a series of which Bellman was the editor, and Bellman took note of the dissertation.

Rutherford Aris taught a graduate fluid mechanics course, and eventually wrote the book Vectors, tensors, and the basic equations of fluid mechanics in an effort to make the rational mechanics approach of Truesdell, Coleman, and others more accessible to students.

Rutherford Aris lectured in many places in Europe, including Brussels, Copenhagen, and Trondheim.

Rutherford Aris spent his time writing a monograph on mathematical models for porous catalysts, which he did not finish until 1973.

Rutherford Aris was appointed acting head of the department, while Amundson left Minnesota for the University of Houston.

Rutherford Aris acted as department chair for 4 years, and was relieved of the position in 1978.

At the University of Minnesota, Rutherford Aris was able to pursue his interest in paleography when he was granted a professorship in the Classics Department, where he taught classes and published books and research articles.

Rutherford Aris published his book Explicatio Formarum Literarum, or The Unfolding of Letterforms, which covered the history of written letters from the 1st century to the 15th century.

Rutherford Aris dedicated a portion of his time to paleography, utilizing the nearby Huntington Library.

Additionally, through a personal connection at the University of Leeds, Rutherford Aris was able to spend several weeks there as Brotherton Professor in 1985.

Rutherford Aris penned many poems and anecdotes, many relating his difficulties with Parkinson's disease, from which Rutherford Aris eventually died.

Rutherford Aris was well known for his research on mathematical modeling, chemical reactor and chemical process design, and distillation techniques, as well as his paleographic research.

Some awards and honors earned by Rutherford Aris include a Guggenheim Fellowship, election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1975 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988.

Rutherford Aris was a member of the American Chemical Society, the Society for Mathematical Biology, and the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, among others.

Rutherford Aris was awarded the Neal R Amundson Award for Excellence in Chemical Reaction Engineering by the International Symposia on Chemical Reaction Engineering in 1998.