Chemical engineering degrees awarded

FIGURE 5.1 Chemical engineering degrees awarded in the United States, 1966 to 1997. SOURCE National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Studies, Science and Engineering Degrees 1966-97, NSF 00-310 (Author, Susan T. Hill), NSF, Arlington, VA, February 2000. 

In 1920 the Horthy regime introduced a numerus clausus law restricting university admission which required that the comparative numbers of the entrants correspond as nearly as possible to the relative population of the various races or nationalities. The law, which would limit Jewish admissions to 5 percent, a drastic reduction, was deliberately anti-Semitic. Though he was admitted to the University of Budapest and might have stayed, von Neumann chose instead to leave Hungary at seventeen, in 1921, for Berlin, where he came under the influence of Fritz Haber and studied first for a chemical engineering degree, awarded at the Technical Institute of Zurich in 1925. A year later he picked up a Ph.D. summa cum laude in mathematics at Budapest in 1927 he became a Privatdozent at the University of Berlin in 1929, at twenty-five, he was invited to lecture at Princeton. He was professor of mathematics at Princeton by 1931 and accepted lifetime appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1933. 

Figure 1.1. Chemical engineering degrees awarded during the period 1975-1996. (Data from Chemical and Engineering News, Annual Reports on Professional Training, 1975 through 1997.)...

This episode has been displayed in some detail because colloid science is a clear instance of a major field of research which has never quite succeeded in gaining recognition as a distinct discipline, in spite of determined attempts by a number of its practitioners. The one feature that most distinguishes colloid science from physical chemistry, polymer science and chemical engineering is that universities have not awarded degrees in colloid science. That is, perhaps, what counts most for fields with ambitions to become fullblown disciplines. 

David P. Wilkinson received his BASc degree in chemical engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1978 and his PhD degree in chemistry from the University of Ottawa in 1987. In 2004, after 20 years of industrial experience. Dr. Wilkinson was awarded a Tier 1 Canada research chair in clean energy and fuel cells in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of British Columbia. He presently maintains a joint appointment with the university and the Canadian National Research Council Institute for Fuel Cell Innovation. 

Carolyn Ann Koh is an associate professor of chemical engineering and is the co-Director of the Center for Hydrate Research at the Colorado School of Mines. Previously, she was a reader in chemistry at King s College, London University. She received the Young Scientist Award in 2002 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She has been visiting professor of Cornell University, Penn State, and London University. She has over 55 refereed publications, and has given numerous invited lectures on hydrates. Dr. Koh holds degrees from the University of West London and conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. 

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