In Memoriam: Daniel E. Rosner, Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering and Mechanical Engineering
Our beloved colleague, mentor, and friend, Dan Rosner, passed away on Monday February 3rd with his wife Sue and son Stefan by his side. Dan was the Llewellyn West Jones, Jr. Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, with a joint appointment in Mechanical Engineering.
Dan's professional trajectory started in graphic arts and printmaking at the High School of Music and Art in New York City. After high school, Dan switched to engineering but maintained a keen interest in graphic arts as a hobby. Dan earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering at City College of New York and a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. He joined the Yale Engineering faculty in 1969 after 11 years of industrial research, and twice served as department chair. Dan's textbook, Transport Processes in Chemically Reacting Flow Systems, won the American Society of Engineering Education award in 1988, and is widely used for teaching Transport Phenomena in chemical engineering departments across the country. He received the David Sinclair lifetime achievement award from the American Association of Aerosol Research in 1999, an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Educatión a Distancia in Madrid in 2002, and the Particle Technology Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2011. In 2005, Dan was nominated to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering and was awarded the Llewellyn West Jones, Jr. Chair of Chemical and Environmental Engineering.
Dan directed the dissertations of 23 PhD students from all over the world. He published over 280 scientific papers on problems in chemically reacting flows, aerosol science, and other broadly related fields, conducting experiments and computations and developing useful analytical models for industrial applications. He stayed in close touch with his students and remained active in research as a Senior Research Scholar and emeritus professor well past his retirement from Yale in 2014, continuing to publish several papers each year.
Dan's creative research exemplifies the theme of his 2004 essay "On the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Research Outside of the Mainstream" written for the "Rosnerfest" ceremony on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Engineers at NASA sought Dan's expertise on high-temperature reacting flows for developing the heat-shield tiles to protect the Space Shuttle during hypersonic reentry. In collaboration with the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale and the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Dan directed wind-tunnel experiments and heat transfer computations on the fins of Stegosaurus. This work forms the basis for the current hypothesis that the primary purpose of the fins was most likely thermoregulation, not armor or sexual display as previously supposed. The paper "Plates of the Dinosaur Stegosaurus: Forced Convection Heat Loss Fins?" was published in Science (June 1976) with Dan's meticulous hand-rendered etching of Stegosaurus on the journal cover, evoking his artistic roots as did his trademark hand-drawn technical figures in other papers and the beautiful illustrations in his text. Dan's signature woodcut prints of industrial settings and watercolor paintings of Yale architecture are familiar to many in the community. A collection of his art can be admired at the Koerner Center, and matted reproductions are available at Merwin's Art Shop.
Dan will be deeply missed by his colleagues and former students. His influence in the field of chemical engineering through his research, mentoring, teaching, and his shaping of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale will be felt for a long time.
A memorial remembrance of Dan will take place this spring. He will be laid to rest at that time, in the company of other luminaries and friends, at the Grove Street Cemetery.
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Published Date
Feb 20, 2025
