János M. Beér papers

From the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering http://web.mit.edu/cheme/people/profile.html?id=38

Education

D.Sc., University of Sheffield, England, 1968 Ph.D., University of Sheffield, England, 1960 Dipl.-Ing., Technical University of Budapest, 1950

Honors and Awards

The Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, 2008 The US Department of Energy's Homer Lowry Award, 2003 The George Westinghouse Gold Medal of ASME International, 2001 Energy Systems Award, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1998 Honorary Doctorate, University of Technical Sciences of Budapest, Hungary, 1997 Axel Axelson Johnson Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering, 1995 Honorary Member, Hungarian National Academy of Engineering, 1991 Foreign Member, Finnish Academy of Engineering, 1989 ASME Percy-Nicholls Award, 1988 Honorary Doctorate, University of Miskolc, Hungary, 1987 Honorary Member Hungarian Academy of Science, 1986 Coal Science Gold Medal, BCURA, 1986 Egerton Gold Medal of the Combustion Institute, 1986 Melchett Medal of the Institute of Energy, 1985 Fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.), 1978

Research Interests

clean fossil energy electric power generation turbulent combustion of gaseous, liquid and solid fuels reduction of pollutant emission from flames by combustion process modification.

From Obituary by Philip Sharpman https://ifrf.net/ifrf-blog/professor-janos-m-beer-1923-2018/ In 1976, János Beer joined the Engineering Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as Professor of Chemical and Fuel Engineering, becoming Professor Emeritus in 1993. He remained active in this role until 2017. Renowned for his contributions as an educator, consultant and researcher in the field of combustion, energy and power generation engineering, János Beér’s impressive list of firsts include: providing an analogy for modelling combustion systems using water model studies; developing scaling laws and criteria for use in combustors and furnaces; studying single droplet combustion and providing the burning rates of droplets; and determining means for reducing NO emission from fluidised bed combustors, furnaces and gas turbines. He has authored more than 300 technical papers and has co-authored (with his old IFRF colleague, Norman Chigier) the textbook titled Combustion Aerodynamics (Applied Science Publishers, 1972), which provided the authoritative basis for the characterisation of the flow patterns in flames and furnaces for more than two decades. János received many high honours and awards over his almost 70-year career in combustion, from leading organisations, universities and institutions in the USA, UK, Sweden and his native Hungary. Although he left IFRF’s IJmuiden research station over 55 years ago, János remained deeply committed to the vision and research of IFRF, becoming our General Superintendent of Research (SoR) from 1970 to 1989 and participating in the Joint Committee (governance board) throughout this period. He was honoured by being made an Honorary SoR in 1989, joining Professor Meredith Thring in that distinction. -Philip Sharpman