Norman Epstein

I grew up in Montreal, did my first two degrees at McGill, where I continued as a lecturer for two years. I then earned my doctorate, with a thesis on “Flow Through Assemblages of Spheres”, under John Happel at New York University, and was hired by UBC in 1951. I retired nominally in 1988.

In the interim, I taught a large variety of courses, undergraduate and graduate, in chemical engineering fundamentals, unit operations and transport phenomena, as well as the opening courses in Technology and Society, which I had lobbied for. I spent most summers of the fifties in industry.

The research I have supervised includes momentum, head and mass transfer studies for fluid flow in conduits and through arrays of particles, with emphasis on packed, liquid-fluidized, gas-liquid-fluidized and spouted beds; and fouling of heat exchangers. I started as a hands-on, but have ended up a hands-off, chemical engineer.