International Journal of Multiphase Flow 67 (2014) 1

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International Journal of Multiphase Flowj o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / i j m u l fl o w

Foreword
Professor Geoffrey Frederick Hewitt on his
80th birthday

He has made signiﬁcant contributions to the ﬁelds of multiphase ﬂows and heat transfer and the wider ﬁeld of engineeringin his illustrious career. These have been recognised by the honours bestowed upon him:
 Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1985.
 Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990.
 Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 1998.

Professor Geoffrey Frederick Hewitt (Geoff, or GFH, as he is
known to all) has been working in multiphase ﬂow and heattransfer for nearly 60 years. From his enthusiasm and energy
one would not believe that he is 80 years old. Yet his birth certiﬁcate states that he was born on the 3rd January, 1934. Such adate in the middle of the northern hemisphere winter is hardly
the weather for a celebration. Not surprisingly, in the UnitedKingdom, the Queen has an ofﬁcial birthday in the summer.
Following this precedent, Geoff’s present and former PhD students and coworkers organized and participated in a celebratory conference in London 23–25th July 2014. This was anexcellent event with an abundance of thought provoking presentations. However, such events are ephemeral. To provide alasting record of the esteem in which Geoff is held, his colleagues, friends and students (past and present) have written
a series of original papers which are being published in thisSpecial issue of the International Journal of Multiphase Flow.
Professor Hewitt’s speciality for several decades has been in
gas-liquid and liquid-liquid systems, with particular reference tochannel ﬂow and heat transfer with applications ranging fromnuclear reactors to process heat exchange, from hydrocarbon
recovery to multiphase ﬂow metering. He earned a BSc Tech in1954 followed by a Ph.D. in 1957 both from the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology. In 1957, He joined theHarwell Laboratory of the UKAEA as a Scientist, and was appointed
Division Head in 1976. GFH founded an early Joint Industry Project,the Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Service in 1968 and remained at
its helm until 1982. His academic career began in 1985, when
joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College
on a part-time basis as a Professor; the appointment became fulltime in 1990. He assumed the post of Courtaulds Professor ofChemical Engineering at Imperial College London between 1993
and 1999, before becoming an Emeritus Professor in 1999.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmultiphaseﬂow.2014.08.010
0301-9322/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

He has received all the principal international awards in multiphase ﬂows and heat transfer: the Donald Q. Kern Award, AIChE,
the Max Jakob Award, ASME, the Luikov Medal, ICHMT, the Nusselt-Reynolds Prize, ICEHT, and the 2007 ICMF Senior Multiphase
Flow Award. In 2007, GFH received the Global Energy Prize at
the World Economic Forum.
He was President of the U.K. Institution of Chemical Engineers
in 1989–1990.
Professor Hewitt has published over 400 reports and papers andnumerous books, on multiphase ﬂow and heat and mass transfer,the most famous of which is Annular Two-Phase Flow. He has
graduated over 50 Ph.D. students.
This special issue is dedicated to Geoff’s distinguished careerand outstanding contributions, which have been a source of inspiration to all of us. His papers and books have helped to form theminds of researchers in multiphase ﬂow and heat transfer for thepast ﬁfty years. His ideas have contributed to the improvementof practices in the Power, Process and Oil and Gas industries.
GFH remains active in several areas of multiphase ﬂows, andheat transfer to this day, running a large group of students andpostdocs, and carrying out cutting-edge research with the same
infectious enthusiasm and total dedication that characterised theyoung man that joined Harwell all those years ago.
Happy birthday, Geoff!
Guest Editors of the Special Issue⇑
Jader Barbosa
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jrb@polo.ufsc.br
Barry Azzopardi
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
E-mail address: barry.azzopardi@nottingham.ac.uk
Available online 6 September 2014