The June 2017 issue of Advances in Colloid and Interface Science is a festschrift in honor of Distinguished Professor Eli Ruckenstein, hailed as “A Rare Researcher, Teacher, and Mentor par Excellence” by the guest editors of the special issue.
From their dedicatory article:
Researchers cannot miss the name of Ruckenstein when they are looking in the literature for key insights and research directions in numerous and diverse areas including heat and mass transfer in laminar and turbulent flows, separation processes, catalysis, colloids and emulsions, molecular assembly phenomena, polymer membranes, superconducting materials, immobilized enzymes, nucleation, stability of thin films and foams, design of antifouling surfaces, thrombus growth, etc. They naturally wonder whether there are many researchers named Ruckenstein since the research areas are highly specialized and most researchers usually are confined to working in just a few closely related problem areas. Their suspicion of multiple Ruckensteins is reinforced by the prolific number of publications they find on each topic. When they finally learn that there is only one Eli Ruckenstein, the overwhelming thought that strikes one is how a single individual could have worked on such multiplicity of topics, and contributed significantly and in such depth to so many diverging themes of modern chemical engineering.
Ruckenstein is one of the world’s most influential chemical engineers. He has made ground-breaking contributions in many areas and published more than 1000 scientific papers. He was the first chemical engineer to receive the National Medal of Science, considered the U.S. equivalent of the Nobel Prize. To think of Eli Ruckenstein as an outstanding researcher, a dedicated teacher, and an inspiring mentor of many academic and industrial chemical engineers captures only a partial image of his persona. Indeed, he is among the select few in the community of international chemical engineering and in the history of our profession.
It is our pleasure and privilege to dedicate this festschrift issue of Advances in Colloid and Interface Science to Eli as he just marked his 91st birthday.