Dr. William “Bill” Raymond Schowalter was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on December 15, 1929. His undergraduate studies were at the University of Wisconsin where he
received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1951. He went on to study for an M.S. and Ph.D., both in Chemical Engineering, from the University of Illinois Urbana
Champaign (UIUC) in 1953 and 1957, respectively. Right after graduation, Schowalter started as an associate professor at Princeton University, becoming Associate
Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science (1971-1977) and Chairman of the Chemical Engineering Department (1978-1987). He worked at Princeton from
1957-1989 before becoming Dean of Engineering at his alma mater, UIUC. He worked here from 1989 to 2001 before moving to Emeritus status.
Schowalter’s publications span a range of topics including studies of non-Newtonian flow instabilities and secondary flows; novel methods for measuring the
viscoelastic properties of fluids; and theoretical and experimental work on flocculated dispersions, a particularly trouble-some class of non-Newtonian materials.
The work is characterized by its novelty, its fundamental approach to problems of practical interest, and its foresight in addressing important phenomena such
as wall slip and non-affine deformation (through the formulation of what is now referred to as the Gordon-Schowalter derivative) before the subjects became broadly popular. He wrote one of the very first books on non-Newtonian fluids
entitled appropriately, Mechanics of Non-Newtonian Fluids. He subsequently co-authored a widely-cited and highly influential book on
Colloidal Dispersions with his Princeton colleagues, Dudley Savile and William Russel. Schowalter’s work on the consequences
of droplet deformation and inertial effects in flow around rigid spheres clearly anticipated the possibilities and stimulated much of the later effort in
suspension mechanics. The theme continued through his sophisticated experiments and calculations dealing with growth and collapse of non-spherical bubbles
in polymer solutions. Insightful experiments with A. M. Kraynik (1981) demonstrated clearly the phenomena of slip in capillary flow and the dramatic
effects on extrusion processes. Finally, a series of papers provided the definitive treatment of shear-induced flocculation of colloidal dispersions.
Combining the exact descriptions of hydrodynamic interactions between spheres required for a rigorous theory and low angle light scattering technique
necessary for quantitative experiments resolved confusion in the literature and demonstrated the correspondence possible between theory and experiment.
Schowalter has also been an active member of the international scientific community. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering and
has taken on leadership roles in The Society of Rheology, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the National Committee on Theoretical and
Applied Mechanics. He was an advisor to the National Bureau of Standards as well as serving on several committees and commissions of the National Academy
of Engineering/National Research Council. Additionally, he has worked extensively in the field of international engineering education, where he is
specifically tied to institutions in France and Singapore. William Schowalter was awarded the Bingham Medal in 1988 for his work as a scientist, an
educator, and for his success in combining rheology and descriptions of complex materials within a rigorous and modern fluid mechanical framework.
Sources
Schowalter, William R. “William R. Schowalter".
National Academy of Sciences.
Schowalter, William R. William Schowalter.
Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University (accessed August 16, 2019).
Schowalter, William Raymond. American Men and Women of Science, 19th ed.; R.R. Bowker: 1994; Vol. 6.
Gordon, R. J.; Schowalter, W. R. Anisotropic Fluid Theory: A Different Approach to the Dumbbell Theory of Dilute Polymer Solutions.
Transactions of the Society of Rheology
1972, 16(1), 79–97.
Note: This biography is an adaptation of the following articles previously published by The Society of Rheology.
1988 Bingham Medalist. Rheology Bulletin 1988, 57(2).
Also, Box 6, Folder 51. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740.
Photo Credit
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.