Dr. Howard Brenner was born on March 16, 1929 in New York City. He attended the Pratt Institute for his undergraduate education where he received his BS in
Chemical Engineering in 1950. He then obtained his Sc. D. from New York University in 1957, also in Chemical Engineering. From 1955-1966, Brenner was on the
faculty of the Chemical Engineering department at NYU. In 1966, he moved to a faculty position in the chemical engineering department at Carnegie Mellon
University where he stayed until 1977. From 1977 to 1981, he worked at the University of Rochester where he served as chair of the Chemical Engineering
department. After four years at Rochester, Brenner took a faculty position in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology where he served as the William Henry Dow Professor of Chemical Engineering. He remained at MIT until his death in 2014.
Brenner’s early research was heavily focused on the hydrodynamics and motion of small colloidal particles, and subsequently his interests expanded to include
surfactants, polymers and the rheology of complex interfaces. His book Low Reynolds Number Hydrodynamics, published in 1965 and coauthored with
Dr. John Happel, became the authoritative monograph on the hydrodynamics and rheology of particulate systems. Happel, a professor in the Department of
Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at Columbia University, had served as Brenner’s advisor at New York University, making the book collaboration
a natural partnership.
Brenner is also well-known for his work on developing constitutive equations for dilute suspensions and emulsions, understanding dispersion in complex media
and unravelling the transport processes that dominate the rheology of complex interfaces. In its citation, the Bingham Award committee recognized “his
fundamental contributions to the field of surface diffusion and interfacial mass transfer and dispersion in flow through porous media”
(Rheology Bulletin, 1980). Brenner’s other awards include the Alpha Chi Sigma Award for Chemical Engineering Research (1976),
the W.H Walker (1985) and W.K. Lewis (1999) Awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Colloidal and Surface Chemistry Award from
the American Chemical Society (1980), and the Fluid Dynamics Prize (2001) from the American Physical Society. Additionally, he was elected to the
US National Academy of Engineering in 1980 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000.
Brenner’s passion for research characterized his career and extended past his retirement, evidenced by the revisions he made on a paper just three days
before his death. His work, particularly relating to low Reynolds number hydrodynamics, has secured a lasting place for him among the crucial figures
in the field of rheology.
Sources
Acrivos, Andreas. Reflections on a Rheologist: Howard Brenner (1929-2014). Rheology Bulletin 2015, 84(1), pp. 8–11.
David A. Edwards. Howard Brenner 1929-2014. Memorial Tributes: Volume 19 (2015), National Academy of Engineering. The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
Rheology Bulletin 1980, 49(3).
Also, Box 6, Folder 35. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740.
Photo Credit
AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives.