William R. Schowalter
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
1929 – Present
Chemical Engineer
Awarded Bingham Medal 1988
Fellow, Elected 2015
Dr. William “Bill” Raymond Schowalter’s 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. 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 these 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 highly influential book on Colloidal Dispersions with his Princeton colleagues, Dudley Savile and William Russel
(1999 Bingham Medalist). Schowalter’s work on the consequences of droplet deformation and inertial effects in
flow around rigid spheres stimulated much of the later effort in suspension mechanics. Insightful experiments with fellow inductee
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.
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, especially in 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