Arthur Metzner
University of Delaware
After receiving his doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1950s, Canadian-born Arthur Metzner enthusiastically entered the burgeoning field of chemical engineering and the young academic department he was joining at the University of Delaware. Over the next four decades, he helped build UD’s Department of Chemical Engineering into one of the best known in the country using his remarkable skills as a teacher, adviser, mentor, and research engineer. Metzner’s research interests include the processing of composite materials, polymer processing, fiber spinning and fluid mechanics, and he has consulted with and solved problems for both private companies and governmental agencies. Among his professional accomplishments are the Otto-Metzner correlation for power consumption in mixing of non-Newtonian fluids and landmark work on turbulent flow and flow through porous media. He also is known for a classic paper on the extensional viscosity of fiber suspensions.
A member of the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest professional distinctions in the field, Metzner has received awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Society for Engineering Education and the American Chemical Society. He also received the Bingham Medal and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Rheology, whose journal he edited for a number of years.
Metzner has held the H. Fletcher Brown Professorship since 1962. From 1970-77, he served as chairperson of the University of Delaware Department of Chemical Engineering. In 1981, the University of Delaware bestowed upon him its prestigious Francis Alison Award in recognition of his scholarship, professional achievements, and dedication, and in 1993, the Arthur B. Metzner Symposium was organized to celebrate his 40 years of leadership and service at the University. The October 1994 issue of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research was dedicated to him. He continued his interest in the field of chemical engineering and maintained an office in the academic department he helped to shape. The oral history in this volume was completed shortly before his death on May 4, 2006.
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It took a village to create this engineer
Profile
Arthur Metzner was ushered into a career in chemical engineering by a small Canadian community located at the intersection of the North American prairies and the boreal forest. The village was frequently isolated by the heavy accumulation of snow in the winter, and its inhabitants during the 1930s were unable to afford either automobiles or the gasoline to run them in the summer. Metzner recalls that this isolation caused the residents of his hometown to bond with each other, sharing their hopes and dreams for the future.
“High school students were included in the communal activities and their career paths were major subjects of discussion,” Metzner says. “Frequently, careers were not determined solely by the students themselves and their parents, but also by the community as a whole. This ‘family’ determined that I should enroll in the University of Alberta to study engineering. Since the chemical industry had just begun its impressive exponential expansion after World War II, chemical engineering was a natural choice.
After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering in 1948 from the University of Alberta and a doctorate in science from MIT in 1951, Metzner spent a few years in industry before coming to the University of Delaware.
Because the chemical industry was actively seeking academic connections, Metzner began a long series of consulting activities with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., Colgate, the Defense Research Board of Canada and the Canadian defense research establishment, Dow, General Motors, Mobil, Merck, NASA, Union Carbide and Westvaco.
“Care had to be taken to avoid conflicts of interest but, if this were done, the fundamental problems of these industries provided a rich source of important engineering research ideas for the campus,” Metzner says. “These research activities centered on rheology, flow, mixing and heat transfer to non-linear fluids—as encountered in processing of polymers, in the handling of slurries and in turbulent drag reduction. Some of these results are now included in engineering handbooks and others have received a pleasing number of citations.”
Two research activities are especially memorable to Metzner. One paper, entitled “Stress Levels in Rapid Extensional Flows of Polymeric Fluids,” was co-authored by his son Arthur P. Metzner. The other, undertaken by his daughter Rebecca, provided the data for a homework problem in a fluid mechanics textbook. Both of the young researchers were in high school when they worked on these problems, he says.
“The chemical engineering department at Delaware was among the youngest nationally when I joined it in 1953. I was the sixth faculty member to join the department, and the challenge for this small group, led by Allan Colburn and Robert Pigford, was to build a research and teaching department of significant stature,” Metzner says. “We worked feverishly at this task. Our students shared in this excitement and bore their academic burdens with surprising tolerance and grace. Many continue to be undaunted by esoteric challenges in their subsequent professional careers and their successes provided all of us great gratification.”
These graduates of the 1950s and later alumni also have supported the department generously in recent years. The Department of Chemical Engineering at Delaware has the most named professorships—eight—of any field at the University of Delaware.
Promoted to full professor in 1961, Metzner received the H. Fletcher Brown Professorship the following year. He served as chairperson of the now increasingly prestigious Department of Chemical Engineering from 1970-77.
“These were exhilarating years in which to be chairman, for the department exhibited the same zeal I’d found in 1953. Five books were published in short order and the research visibility of the faculty was growing by leaps and bounds. A dynamic Center for Catalysis, with participation from industrial visitors and a senior expert, G.C.A. Schuit from the Netherlands, promptly became visible. Six new faculty, four with very significant prior accomplishments, joined the department, and, in addition, we had an interesting number of overseas visitors.
“During these ‘Cold War’ or ‘Iron Curtain’ years, we were given an unusual and unexpected political challenge,” Metzner recalls. “We had hired an outstanding scholar from eastern Europe whose children were being held hostage until their parents’ return. The entire department—now grown in size to more than a dozen faculty —worked passionately to obtain the children’s release. Finally, and with the additional help of an industrial friend and his corporation, the two pre-teen children were permitted to rejoin their parents here. Perhaps few chemical engineering departments have ever encountered such a gratifying opportunity.”
The Metzner family spent vacation periods “bonding in a tent,” either camping on the North Carolina beaches or in the mountains. “Ascending Half Dome in Yosemite Park with two teenagers was our most difficult climb.” During the year diversions from work centered on music. “When our youngest daughter reached the age of six, she was declared sufficiently mature to enjoy opera, and full family subscriptions to the New York Metropolitan Opera were held for well over 30 years.”
In 1982, Metzner received the University of Delaware’s highest faculty award, the Francis Alison Award, established by the Board of Trustees in 1978 to recognize scholarship, professional achievements and dedication of its faculty. He also has earned awards from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the Society of Rheology, the American Society for Engineering Education, and the American Chemical Society. In 1979, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and he has received honorary doctorates from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the University of Delaware.
Metzner has served on the advisory councils for chemical engineering at McGill University, MIT, Pennsylvania State University and Princeton. He also has served on the boards and/or executive committees of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the American Institute of Physics and the Society of Rheology.
Acknowledging his mentors, Metzner says “there were very few associates over the years, both in academia and industry, who were not important mentors to me. And, as the years went by, older mentors were replaced with equally important younger associates. The young mentors in the last decade of my career were no less important than the older people of the first.”
Metzner’s research interests include processing of composite materials, polymer processing, fiber spinning and fluid mechanics. World renowned for his research on the flow of non-Newtonian fluids or rheology, he served as editor of the Journal of Rheology and received the distinguished service award from the Society of Rheology in 1997.
Among his professional accomplishments are the Otto-Metzner correlation for power consumption in mixing of non-Newtonian fluids and landmark work on turbulent flow and flow through porous media. He also is known for a classic paper on the extensional viscosity of fiber suspensions.
In 1993, the Arthur B. Metzner Symposium was held at the University of Delaware to celebrate his 40 years of leadership and service. More than 80 letters of congratulations, praise and thanks from former students and professional colleagues around the world came to the department to be placed in a memory book.
A former student, the late Gianni Astarita of the University of Naples, wrote that the most important thing Metzner taught him was to seek intellectual and academic honesty. “Never lie to oneself. Fight against injustices and dishonesty, even at the cost of personal drawbacks…. It was Art who taught me—not in words, but by example—the importance of trying.”
Ramesh A. Mashelkar of the National Chemical Laboratory of India and now director-general of the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research wrote: “I wish to take this opportunity to thank Art for the willing help he has given me throughout my life. He has been an inspiring leader for all of us. Betty Metzner has taken great pride in welcoming many national and international visitors, and she has been a gracious and charming hostess. Betty and Art, together, symbolize something unique to all of us.”
Stanley Middleman, professor of chemical engineering at University of California, San Diego, remembered Metzner’s kindness at an early stage of his career. “My first book, The Flow of High Polymers, had just been published. Some months later, I received in the mail a huge color photograph of a bookstore in England. There, in the window display, was my book. Art had come across it while he was in England, took the picture and had the print made and sent to me. To a young professor just a few years into his career, it was an enormous thrill….But, more than this, I was touched and honored that Art took the time to do this. The memory continues to warm me.”
J.R. Anthony Pearson of the University of Cambridge and, later, of the Imperial College of the University of London, noted that Art Metzner “bothered to find out about real industrial problems, was full of insights into them and felt that they were the proper starting points for academia in engineering…[he believed] academics should look more deeply into them than industrial workers could afford to do.”
Another colleague, Roger I. Tanner of Sydney, Australia, who spent three semesters as a visiting professor at the University of Delaware, wrote: “It has always been interesting to watch the way in which Art adapted to the role of benevolent elder of chemical engineering, being utterly devoted to the place and drawing in many younger, talented colleagues by personality, leadership and research reputation. I am impressed by the spirit of joyful cooperation that seems to pervade chemical engineering. This spirit is certainly one of the best tributes possible to Arthur Metzner’s 40 years of work there.”
Reflecting on his career, Metzner says, “For 60 years now, my wife, Elisabeth, has indefatigably devoted her life to mine. This biography could not have been earned without her love, commitment and support.”
Metzner retired as H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering in 1997, although he still maintains an office at the university’s Colburn Laboratory.
And what will be the career pattern of future chemical engineers? Metzner believes their future lies in collaborations with other disciplines. “Today’s chemical engineering students must incorporate additional areas of study, including biochemistry and physics,” he says. “They will no longer automatically go to work in large chemical companies, and more of the best opportunities will be found overseas.
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