In Memoriam: Raymond Viskanta

ASME Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

Frank Incropera, “During my 32 years at Purdue, I was very fortunate
to have Ray Viskanta as a mentor, colleague, and collaborator. One ofthe most important things he taught me was that, however well today’s
research may be going, one should always be thinking ahead. What
will be the important problems of tomorrow, and what seeds could beplanted to better address those problems? Yes, he contributed
enormously to the science of heat transfer, but he was often at theforefront of applications to some of society’s most pressing problems.
And, there is another important dimension to the life of Ray Viskanta.
He was one of the kindest and most decent human beings I have everknown. For 55 years, I was blessed to have had him as a friend.”
Professor Viskanta’s lifelong love of heat transfer was also
matched by the genuine affection he had for his graduate students
who knew him as “RV.” He held us to a high technical standard, at thesame time providing frequent warm encouragement. We were taught
to break down a research problem into smaller, more tractable
subproblems. Through his careful and quick review of draft
manuscripts, RV taught us to write well. A draft publication left
with RV late in the afternoon would be on the student’s desk early thenext morning with copious notes and redline corrections. RV wasanxious to give applicants from around the world the opportunity topursue graduate study with him. His lab was a global mix ofindividuals with a remarkable array of backgrounds and nationalities.
Those accepted for graduate study with RV were excited by thenews and felt honored to work with him. One former student
applied only to Purdue for Ph.D. study, to work only with RV. In
response, Professor Viskanta sent duplicate personal letters to theapplicant’s home and university office to make sure the student was
notified of acceptance.
The extraordinary research that came out of RV’s lab was nevermore important to him than the personal lives and growth of his
graduate students. All of us felt Ray and Barbara Viskanta’s deep
affection, and they often became surrogate parents to us, especiallythose of us who were far from home. The Viskantas hosted regulardinners at their home for those studying with RV, and they stayed intouch with many of his students long after graduation watching withpride their accomplishments over the years, and even theaccomplishments of their students’ children. When the young adultson of a former graduate student was honored for his academic
performance at a university and his parents could not attend, Ray andBarbara drove several hours to the award ceremony and accompanied the son to a celebratory dinner.
Ray Viskanta was a one-of-a-kind professor, mentor, and friend.
As his former graduate students and colleagues, we collectively
express our deep appreciation and respect for his influence on ourprofessional and personal lives. The international heat transfer
community will remember Professor Raymond Viskanta not only asa scientist and engineer of the first class, but also as a gentle man who
was deeply and personally connected to scores of heat transfer
researchers and educators around the world.
With deep admiration and affection, on behalf of all of RV’s
former graduate students and colleagues,

C 2023 by ASME
Copyright V

Marcus V. A. BianchiU.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory,Golden, CO 80401
Theodore L. Bergman
University of Kansas,Lawrence, KS 66044
Vijay K. Dhir
University of California Los Angeles,
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Amir Faghri
University of California, Los Angeles,
Los Angeles, CA 90095
MAY 2023, Vol. 145 / 050101-1

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It was with great sadness that the heat transfer community learnedof the passing of Professor Raymond Viskanta on December 27, 2021.
Raymond Viskanta was born in Marijampole, Lithuania in 1931.
In 1944, his family escaped the advancing Russian-German front,
fleeing to Germany. After a tenuous survival in Germany during theremainder of the war, they were moved to displaced persons campsin West Germany starting in 1945. In 1949, the family came to theUnited States, initially to work as farm laborers in Michigan.
Raymond subsequently moved to Chicago in 1950, where he foundemployment as a factory worker during the day and attended highschool classes in the evening.
After receiving his high school degree in 1951, he began hishigher education by taking night courses at a junior college, thenenrolled full time at the University of Illinois-Navy Pier. He latertransferred to the main campus where he received his B.S.M.E.
degree with high honors from the University of Illinois in 1955. Thiswas followed by a M.S.M.E degree, focusing on heat transfer, fromPurdue in 1956. Raymond Viskanta then accepted a position at theArgonne National Laboratory, pursuing and completing his doctoral
research in absentia, and receiving his Ph.D. from Purdue in 1960.
Professor Viskanta continued at Argonne until 1962 when he joined
the faculty at Purdue as Associate Professor. He was promoted to therank of Professor in 1966 and was named the W.F.M. Goss
Distinguished Professor in 1986.
Professor Viskanta’s research contributions, in the form of over
500 publications in more than 50 journals, as well as over 200 keynote
presentations and invited lectures, have been immensely influential.
His earliest work developed an initial understanding of radiation inparticipating media, including the presence of other significant heattransfer modes. Similarly, his many contributions in convection dealt
with little-understood phenomena at the time as disparate as doublediffusion transport and jet impingement boiling. Professor Viskanta’s research in melting and solidification in pure materials as wellas metallic alloys, including solid–liquid phase change in thepresence of convection in the liquid phase, was seminal. Whiledeveloping the formative understanding of these and many otherheat transfer phenomena, his research was simultaneously
motivated by practical applications involving combustion andfire, materials processing and manufacturing, and conventional aswell as emerging energy generation and storage technologies.
Professor Viskanta’s service contributions to the heat transfer
community were extensive. In addition to organizing many heattransfer conferences, he served as technical editor, associatetechnical editor, advisory board member, or honorary advisoryboard member of the Applied Mechanics Reviews, Experimental
Heat Transfer, International Communications in Heat and MassTransfer, International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, ASME Journal of HeatTransfer, Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative HeatTransfer, AIAA Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer,Numerical Heat Transfer, and the Annual Review of Numerical
Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer. While he received the mostprominent international awards specific to heat transfer, Professor
Viskanta’s professional accomplishments were also recognized byhis election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987, being
named a foreign member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in
1990, and becoming a foreign member of the Academy ofEngineering Sciences of the Russian Federation in 1995. Among
his many other accolades were his receiving an Honorary Doctorateof Engineering Degree from the Technical University of Munich in
1994, and an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering Degree fromPurdue in 2007.
During his lifelong academic career at Purdue, Professor Viskanta
guided the research of 64 doctoral students, 48 master’s students,and 39 postdoctoral researchers and visiting scholars. His
professional colleagues at Purdue remember him as an intensely
focused researcher who efficiently handled his many responsibilities
with warmth, grace, humor, and an enormous intellect. As shared by

Andrei G. Fedorov
Georgia Institute of Technology,Atlanta, GA 30332

Xiulin Ruan
Purdue University,
West Lafayette, IN 47907

M. Pinar Meng€uç€gin University,
Ozye
Istanbul 34794, Turkey

Tae-Ho SongDepartment of Mechanical Engineering,
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology,
Daejeon, 34141 Republic of Korea

Abdulmajeed Mohamad
University of Calgary,
Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
Laurent Pilon
University of California Los Angeles,
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Xianfan Xu
Purdue University,
West Lafayette, IN 47907

Transactions of the ASME

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050101-2 / Vol. 145, MAY 2023

Brent W. Webb
Brigham Young University,Provo, UT 84602